Good Morning, Iran

All of a sudden, thanks to Twitter and Bill Keller, Iran is like the biggest story of the year! What's the latest? Killings in the street, a president on the run, media in peril, and a Florida 2000 recount replay:

• Seven protesters were killed by the military Monday, according to Iran's state media.
• Ahmadinejad is asserting his iron grip on control of Iran by...leaving the country? Mahmoud declared victory and then immediately left town and is currently attending a global financial meeting in Russia, where he's been photographed chilling with Russia's president and looking quite relaxed.
• Just to make sure that word of this little "bad election" episode doesn't get out (that would be disastrous!), Iran authorities are "requiring journalists to obtain explicit permission before covering any story." They've also totally banned reporters from covering the street protests. Which feature hundreds of thousands of maddened Iranians and the aforementioned killings. Because they don't exist. Got it?
• And all that is just the sideshow, at least in the classic newspaper sense of covering the news. The real political story is the protests have worked, to some extent—the nation's Guardian Council has ordered a recount. Which supporters of Moussavi, the alleged loser, reject! They want a whole new election. So we can do all this over again. But yea, who's gonna do the recount?
• Ayatollah Ali Khameini, that's who!

Send an email to Hamilton Nolan, the author of this post, at Hamilton@gawker.com.

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