I’ve been following the #iranelection Twitter feed all day and there is a firehose quatity of information and disinformation coming out of Iran and the Iranian diaspora. This isn’t the Orange Revolution or the Velvet Revolution. This is the Twitter Revolution.
Tomorrow at 4pm, there will marches in 20 Iranian cities. Mousavi has applied for permits in Tehran, but if the Interior Ministry denies those permits, he will lead a procession to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s shrine. On Tuesday, there will be a general strike. Mousavi’s supporters will not open their businesses and they will not go to work.
There are many unconfirmed reports of violence, but so far, few reports of any deaths. The real showdown will begin tomorrow. The government is very aware that creating martyrs will be counterproductive and lead to the same escalation of mourning and protesting that brought down the Shah. For this reason, the police are beating on people but refraining from killing them. That strategy is solid, but may be difficult to maintain tomorrow and the next day.
Observing the Twitter feeds, this has already morphed from a protest about an election to a revolutionary threat to the regime.
An NPR report today said Mousavi has reversed himself and said the election was valid. If so, what’s he marching about?
I think that might have been noted by someone.
lot of rumors that there students getting killed at the university in the dorms.
Watch them rush the cops, burn one of their motorcycles and the rescue one of the officers. With exciting Italian commentary.
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The mission of the Basij as a whole can be broadly defined as helping to maintain law and order; enforcing ideological and Islamic values and combating the “Western cultural onslaught”; assisting the IRGC in defending the country against foreign threats; and involvement in state-run economic projects.
In terms of maintaining law and order, Basij members act as “morality police” in towns and cities by enforcing the wearing of the hijab; arresting women for violating the dress code; prohibiting male-female fraternization; monitoring citizens’ activities; confiscating satellite dishes and “obscene” material; intelligence gathering; and even harassing government critics and intellectuals. Basij volunteers also act as bailiffs for local courts.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Finally found some photos supposedly from Teheran University dorms: link
Where are the people who kept claiming this was no big deal? Looks like it is a far bigger deal than even I was guessing it might become just two days ago.
Yesterday I said that it was reminiscent of Chicago in 1968. The YouTubes coming out were mostly showing young men throwing rocks and dodging a massive police presence. There was no communication structure that could direct their activism; the regime had disrupted it and the workarounds had not appeared. It looked at that point that the police would have overwhelming force.
There are some reported events in the last 24 hours that may have changed the situation. The opposition candidates have all gotten out word (grain of salt disclaimer) that the election was a sham – even the former head of the Revolutionary Guard. Mousavi has announced demonstrations in 20 cities and a general strike countrywide for tomorrow. Tomorrow will be an indication of how deep and wide the discontent runs. There was a report (grain of salt) that the regular Tehran police were implicitly “on the side of the people”. There are reports that Ahmedinejad does not want to create any martyrs and this is somewhat restraining the crackdown. There are YouTubes two nights in a row of adults on rooftops chanting slogans; how widespread this “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” symbolism has become.
It is no longer a little deal. At the very least, Khamenei and the Islamic Republic are gone, regardless of what happens. That is going to delay any sorting out of the foreign policies of other nations. And it also delays whatever Iran was doing at its nuclear faciities.
So right now, the relations between the rest of the world and Iran are on hold while the situation gets sorted out.
This is perhaps not the case. Asad in Syria quelled his revolt centered in Hama. I don’t know how available this option is for Khameni and his cronies, but I’m waiting for signs of it.
If Khamenei is to come out on top, he has to undercut Ahmedinejad. That means a new and Khamenei-supervised election or the appointment of some “none of the above” as President. Annointing Ahmedinejad twice does not look like strength.
Tomorrow is another day.
Yes but everyone will know that he kept force by the military, and nothing else. A secular police state with religious window-dressing. I don’t know if Khamenei is gone or not but if he’s going to rely on the Guard to keep him in power they are going to end up owning HIM.
Also in Hama all the rebels stupidly gathered in one place.
wow. You sign up for Twitter and look what happens …
it was just waiting for me!!!
Some advocate having Obama firmly denounce the Iran election results. The United States lecturing another nation about conducting a fair presidential ballot is akin to expecting us to declare other nations shouldn’t, um, I don’t know, torture?
I think that would be the worst possible thing we could do, our own recent checkered election history aside. American support for the revolt would provide the Iranian government a pretext for treating the rebels as foreign agents, a step that is easy enough to take already after American-sponsored terrorism in Iran under Bush. (Which reminds me, when do we end up on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism?)
If the rebels appeal to the US, we might then want to offer at least moral support, but until we are invited, we should keep our noses well out of it, or we will harm the very people we hope to assist.
All that being the case, if they succeed in toppling the current regime, we should fall over ourselves trying to establish good relations with them. As I’ve stated before, Iran is our natural ally in the region, and in addition to all of the other benefits of a restored US-Iranian alliance, it would whip the Israelis into line so fast it’d curl Netanyahu’s hair.
well, this looks grim.
A histoy lesson.
A primer on elections in developing countries by As’ad AbuKhalil.
my favorites are #2 and #11:
2) Violent protests against elections that produce winners favored by the west, are to be strictly condemned and protesters are to be called terrorists, hooligans and mobs (can you imagine if Lebanese opposition supporters were to engage in violent protests against the election results in Lebanon), while violent protests against enemies of the US when they win elections (like in Moldova) are to be admired (and the protesters in those cases are called “democracy activists”).
11) It is just not logical to assume that people in developing countries can freely ever decide to make choices that are not consistent with political and economic interests of the US.
whatever, do you now support ansar hezbollah?
Good piece by Ackerman.