"Poor Moussavi, we took the easel away from his hands and gave him a gun," quipped a supporter of Mir-Hossein Moussavi, the aggrieved reformist Iranian presidential candidate who is now the country's main opposition leader.

As the Iran crisis enters a new phase, after thousands of people defied warnings from the supreme leader and took to the street on Saturday, only to face a violent security response, Mr Moussavi, who had spent much of the past two decades painting, has been forced to assume a leadership role.