"Protests almost toppled regime," head of regime’s Guardian Council says

Last year’s popular protests in Iran almost led to the downfall of the Iranian theocracy, a senior clerical regime official said on July 28.
According to the state-run Jahan News website, the head of the regime’s Guardian Council, Ahmad Jannati said in a speech on Wednesday that the post-June 2009 uprising aimed to overthrow the Iranian regime, which is based on the principle of velayat-e faqih or absolute clerical rule.
“In the 21 years that [Ali Khamenei] has been Supreme Leader, there have been much domestic and foreign sedition, the most ominous of which were the 2009 events.”
Clearly fearful of the overthrow of the theocracy, the Secretary of the Guardian Council, also said, “[They] were under the impression that the revolution is over and nothing will remain of the establishment, because this was a soft war and people would distance themselves from the regime. And, when the establishment loses the people’s backing, it would automatically collapse.”
Jannati added, “In addition to the vast sedition of 2009, in the course of the leadership of Ayatollah Khamenei, there were other examples which on a number of occasions even went close to toppling the establishment.”