Hopefully we’ve reached a tipping point in Iran. The protests are intensifying, and it’s clear many Iranians will never see their “government” as legitimate in the future.
It is difficult to get any reliable picture of the scale of the protests in Tehran, let alone the whole country.
But they spread rapidly during the evening. The cheers and chanting echoed even in customarily quiet middle-class neighbourhoods.
Many Iranians came out on to their roofs to shout “down with the dictator”.
It has become a challenge not just of an election result, not just to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei himself.
That means it is, in effect, a challenge to the whole basis of the Islamic Republic.
For two years I have watched as young, ambitious Iranians go about their lives with growing frustration.
They feel the system stifles their aspirations. Now they feel that their intelligence and their pride has been insulted by an election result many Iranians believe is blatantly fraudulent.
And President Ahmadinejad’s almost casual dismissal of their complaints just adds to the anger.
