Iran's hardline president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Photograph: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images
Iran's pro-reform bloggers are today scrabbling around trying to work out where they go from here after hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's surprise victory in the presidential elections.
Some rail against the apathy of the young. Others attack the reform movement in its entirety as a futile enterprise that only helps the theocratic system by safely draining away opposition.
One poster on a comment board on Hossein "Hoder" Derakhshan's Editor: Myself blog writes: "We are just seeing the true face of power in Iran, which has not changed one bit in the last 26 years. While some reformers may have had great intentions, their legacy will be recorded in history as appeasing an inhumane system by giving it an appearance of legitimacy."
Frankly there is a sense of crisis among the middle class, wired-up, pro-reform bloggers at how out of touch they are with the people who voted in Mr Ahmadinejad.
Hoder wonders about how to better reach people and theorises that reformers need more exposure on satellite television.
The reform movement can't reach beyond a certain population. They only have newspapers and Internet, with an approximate reach of five to seven millions. While the regime has a monopoly on TV and radio, the reformists can't even reach the majority of the middle-class, especially the youth, who are not into reading anymore, let alone the lower-class in rural areas.
This view kindles a lively debate on Hoder's comment board and draws criticism from one poster, Barmak Nikbakht, who argues that satellite is not the way to bring down a "brutal dictatorship" which will "only collapse after alienating ring after ring of its base support".
Another poster called Behrooz says: "Do you expect the so-called reformers in exile from abroad to spread their propaganda and expect people to really listen? They have no idea what it is to live in poverty from their lush homes in Los Angeles, Great Britain, etc."
However, a poster called Nazee, agrees with Hoder that the communication/information gap is important because it "not only kept us apart from the pulse of the Iranian society but led us into a deluded image of ourselves and our country."
For the future, Nazee continues that "the first step is perhaps to try and know our country ... Ahmadinejad seems to have known it better than I, I must admit that with the deepest of regret".
Omid Memarian, an Iranian journalist, says that there was something "soothing" about Mr Ahmadinejad, and voters liked the clips of his modest home in his campaign video.
G, another poster on Hoder's site, writes that for many poor Iranians "liberal democracy is meaningless" and "for them the revolution had a real meaning, their support for Ahmedinejad is just their attempt to rekindle that flame".
But despite Mr Ahmadinejad's apparent connection with the poor, none of the bloggers I read have any optimism that the new president elect can actually deliver on his promises to help the poor.
As Martin Woollacott writes in the Guardian today, Mr Ahmadinejad is to some degree as compromised by a corrupt regime as some of the reforming politicians and others who used their position to enrich themselves.
Woollacott says: "Among the men who helped get Ahmadinejad in are many who have profited as much or almost as much. Is Mr Clean going to go after them?"
