What I said repeatedly during the June protests in Iran was that the 1979 Islamic Revolution started in 1978. What started this June is continuing in December:

Police officers in Iran opened fire into crowds of protesters on Sunday, killing at least 10 people, witnesses and opposition Web sites said, in a day of chaotic street battles that threatened to deepen the country’s civil unrest.

The protests, during the holiday commemorating the death of Imam Hussein, Shiite Islam’s holiest martyr, were the bloodiest and among the largest since the uprisings that followed the disputed presidential election last June, witnesses said. Hundreds of people were reported wounded in cities across the country, and the Tehran police said they had made 300 arrests.

One of the dead was Ali Moussavi, a 43-year-old nephew of the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi.

Ashura was a natural time for the next set of protests, and Ali Moussavi’s death sets up another 40-day cycle of mourning. The regime’s violent crackdown, especially during a religious festival, has thus far only created more protest among a wider class of Iranians. Demonstrations were held not only in Tehran but cities like Tabriz and Shiraz.

At the risk of going all “change your template green for freedom!” on you, I would say that, while there is no tipping point where the protesters will disintegrate the regime, the trajectory since June has been on the side of the reformers and against the repression. It may move inexorably slow, because the repressors have the Basij and the guns and the ability to arrest, but that’s the trajectory.

…here was the President’s statement on the violence:

We strongly condemn the violent and unjust suppression of civilians in Iran seeking to exercise their universal rights. Hope and history are on the side of those who peacefully seek their universal rights, and so is the United States. Governing through fear and violence is never just, and as President Obama said in Oslo – it is telling when governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation.

UPDATE: It should always be noted that the leaders of the reformist movement in Iran do not want US sanctions and see them as disruptive to their efforts at progress.