But it is the street protesters who have hammered the last proverbial nail into the coffin of the reform movement. The deeply subversive slogans of the protesters - such as "freedom, Independence, Iranian Republic", which perverts the standard revolutionary slogan of "Freedom, Independence, Islamic Republic" - highlight a considerable gap between the aspirations of an embryonic grassroots movement and the reformists.

Sunday's suicide bomb attack on a conference hall in the Pishin region of Iran's vast Sistan and Balochistan province is by all accounts a major blow against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the most important military and security institution in the country.