Ayatollah Khamenei waves behind Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's new president.

Hardline fundamentalist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has swept to power in Iran , defeating his supposed “moderate” opponent Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the second round of Iran 's presidential election on Friday.

The Iranian regime admitted that 7 million less voters turned up to vote in the second round. This is no surprise, since the ruling Mullahs have absolutely no support from the Iranian population. The regime stays afloat by its barbaric means, of course, and it continues to concoct numbers to feed the public. And while Iranians have been wise to this fact from the very beginning, the Western media continues to accept the lies spun by the Mullahs in Iran .

The details of the second round of “elections” are a depressing picture of where the ruling despots in Iran now stand with their own people. Photos taken by Iranians across Iran and posted on various Iranian websites and blogs, show that polling stations were mostly empty and that 30% of the people who showed up to vote due to having been blackmailed by the regime's forces deposited blank ballots into the boxes in protest. The intimidation was widespread: Iran ’s Gestapo threatened civil servants’ jobs, old people's pensions and students’ grades and future university enrolment. The poor and rural people were intimidated by gun-toting guards who rounded them up to the polling stations. Even dead people’s I.D. cards got stamped so they could vote.

Independent reporters were not permitted to openly take photographs of polling stations as big as Hosseiniyeh Ershaad (uptown Tehran where no one turned up), while members of the international press, who are always happy to twist the truth in favor of the regime, were mostly hustled off to polling stations where intimidated voters were forced to stand.

What is certain is that at least 90% of the urban population of the country (which in fact constitutes almost 43 million of the 72 million population of Iran ) stayed home and did not even step foot into the streets, let alone go to vote. The bulk of the votes, therefore, comes from rural areas where Ahmadinejad had in fact done a little stomping, re-promising innocent people all of Khomeini's empty promises from the early days of the revolution.

The terrorist group Ansar al-Hezbollah, which is a wholehearted supporter of Ahmadinejad, claimed this as a victory for the Basiji “sensibility.”  Basijis are devoted cadets of the revolutionary guards who act as street vigilantes, trolling for people to "discipline" for any violations from the imposed Islamic laws (which includes dress codes). In fact, Ahmadinejad in his capacity as a member of the Revolutionary Guard is a known assassin of many Iranian dissidents who lived in Europe and has an open criminal file in Austria for having personally killed the leader of the Kurdish opposition, Dr. Ghassemlou in Vienna , in 1989. He has also headed up the squad that is directly responsible for the fatwa to assassinate Salman Rushdie. And last but certainly not least, as one of the hostage-takers of the U.S. embassy, he was known to have vehemently pushed for the invasion of the Soviet embassy in Tehran as well.

Young Iranians who have become world famous for their SMS'ing -- which prompted the regime to ban SMS messages during the election week -- have begun calling Ahmadinejad "The Supreme Leader's personal Chimp."

What is clear from this election is the extreme crisis that exists within the regime itself. The scorned Rafsanjani, who emerges from this event as the big loser of the political scene, conceded his defeat to Ahmadinejad with great bitterness and promised “divine vengeance” against the election violators. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamnei is now completely in charge, governing the country from a position of absolute strength. He decided that he could no longer tolerate any form of compromise with the more moderate and pragmatic sectors of the regime that still support the so-called reformists.

Thus, Iran is now heading on a collision course with the West. Both Khamenei and his mouthpiece, Ahmadinejad, have recently reiterated that they will resume uranium enrichment, no matter what the European Union says.

The Iranian election sent two strong messages to the world. The first message is from the people of Iran , whose blatant low turnout to the electoral ballots underlined the profound animosity they hold toward the regime.

The second message is by the Supreme Leader Khamnei, who is clearly calling for a fateful showdown with the West, a challenge for a showdown at the "OK Corral" that may occur even in the next few months.

Finally and most importantly, the outcome of the election in Iran represents a miserable defeat for Europeans and their abysmal attempts at what they like to call diplomacy. The Euro 3 ( UK , France, Germany ) hoped to find a pragmatic interlocutor with whom to continue negotiations. To this aim they asked Dr. Rice to postpone a strong stance against the Mullahs until after the elections. Their margins for diplomatic maneuvering have now entirely disappeared with the “victory” of Ahmadinejad.

Europeans have now been checkmated by the Mullahs as Ahmadinejad so impishly pronounced on Saturday. The people of Iran now just might have the opportunity to finally deal with the Mullahs and “their Chimps” in a manner that befits the Saddams and the Milosevics of the world.