“What you’re seeing is the result of 30 years of pressure and strangling,” said Hossein Rahmati, a 68-year-old carpet seller who was wearing an old-fashioned 1980s suit to attend the march. “Iran is like a dam about to burst.”
And to be fair and balanced:
But across the capital, a few miles to the south, it was a very different rallying cry. Batol Mojahedi, 55, a housewife, stood with one hand holding her black hijab, the other a poster of the supreme leader, Seyed Ali Khamenei.
“My son was martyred in the Iran-Iraq war. I don’t want to lose our Islam. We did not participate in 1979, in the revolution, to have this kind of freedom that Mousavi supporters claim that they want.
“I’m opposed to this kind of freedom. We don’t want the freedom they want. Ahmadinejad is a courageous president. There was not any rigging in Friday’s election. What’s happening now is just [being influenced] by foreigners.”
So who is spreading the idea that an officially approved candidate is the pawn of foreigners? Take one big guess:
State-run television focused on just one side of the city’s realities, broadcasting lingering images of fires raging uncontrollably and urging citizens to take to the streets to deal with “inciters”.
“It’s shocking that these louts are responding in this way to our presidential elections,” said one unnamed man interviewed on state-run TV, referring to the Mousavi camp.
“This nation will protect and defend its revolution in any way,” Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, a prominent politician and supporter of the president, declared as leaflets accusing Mousavi of being a vessel for foreign ambitions were being distributed.
