ZAKARIA: So, take me through this option. You have Khatami, the former president, two-term president, not backing down. Rafsanjani, a former president, the very important leader of the Assembly of Experts not backing down. Larijani, the speaker of the parliament, not backing down.

Can the regime really crack down? I mean, it can arrest people on the street, and it can arrest journalists like Maziar. But what does it do with these very powerful people who have now defied it?

AFSHIN MOLAVI, AUTHOR, "THE SOUL OF IRAN": That's what's so different about what we're seeing in Iran today compared to the 1999 student protests or 2003 protests. Not only do you have the street versus the regime, but you have the regime versus the regime.

And what we're witnessing is kind of an old guard-new guard divide. The old guard, some of the figures you mentioned -- Rafsanjani, Mousavi, Khatami. But there's a new guard of Revolutionary Guard elite, members of the paramilitary Basij command. And they are around Ahmadinejad. And Ahmadinejad...

ZAKARIA: Just so people understand, this is sort of -- it's almost like the old clerical establishment and these new, more military, laypeople often, who are associated with Ahmadinejad. Those are the two camps.

MOLAVI: Absolutely. And what we've witnessed in the past four years is the militarization of Iranian politics. And what we saw in these elections, I think, was the ultimate military action in this fraudulent election, taking over this election on behalf of this new guard.

ZAKARIA: Parag, can they do it? I mean, can this regime just shut this all down?

PARAG KHANNA, AUTHOR, "THE SECOND WORLD": I don't believe so. I think that what we're seeing here is an inter-generational conflict, despite what Afshin said about even the next generation of clerical elites and Basij, and so forth, having members from the younger generation. Still, the masses that you are seeing out there are not going to go away.

The parallel that we never hear is to Ukraine -- Ukraine in 2004, the Orange Revolution -- masses of young people out in the streets. Ultimately, the security forces refused to open fire. And that led to the Orange Revolution. You had a changing of the guard.

Of course, you have a system, or it led to a system where you replaced one set of elites with another. And you still have a lot of corruption, a lot of unpredictability in the politics, but there was a definite change. And I don't think that they are going to be able to shut that down now... Link to transcript

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