WHAT we have witnessed in Iran in recent weeks is a military coup conducted through the ballot boxes. Policymakers and analysts have been talking for a long time about the possibilities and prospects of a change of regime in Iran. Well, I have news for everybody  change of regime in Iran has taken place.

The re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term as Iran's President represents the emergence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp as a military dictatorship  pushing aside the clerics and mullahs. It's a new Iran in many ways. It's an Iran in which the Supreme Leader, despite what you will read in most of the Western press, is not the real victor in the election. He manipulated the elections in such a way as to have Ahmadinejad re-elected. Now, however, the Supreme Leader works for Ahmadinejad, rather than the other way around.

It's a new Iran because it's no longer the Islamic Revolution regime as we have known it since Khomeini took over in 1979. Ahmadinejad's Government is already 60 per cent Revolutionary Guard, and the Iranian parliament is 40 to 50 per cent ex-Revolutionary Guard officers. This election sees the takeover by this group and their allies completed.

Everybody has heard Ahmadinejad's statements  his regime's very clear views on eliminating Israel and the very aggressive and confrontational foreign policy.

The three other candidates, each in a different manner, objected to the way Ahmadinejad ran Iran's nuclear program, hinting very strongly that they did not necessarily see an advantage in the short-term acquisition by Iran of nuclear weapons.