Khamenei will not back down, and he basically told the protesters in Iran that they will be dealt with harshly if they do not put a stop to the movement.
This is the moment of truth for the opposition, and I suspect that they will not back down. There will be bloodshed, unfortunately, but tyrants like Khamenei will not go without a fight.
Hopefully, many in the army and in the leadership will break from Khamenei and Ahmadinejad if they try to crush the rebellion with violence.
The Boston Globe has compiled a host of compelling photos from Iran.
This may be wishful thinking, but I’m starting to believe that there’s no way that the thugs in power can stop this movement in Iran. The numbers are too great.
Here’s an interesting story relayed by Andrew Sullivan.
Rumours are still swirling about the shooting in Azadi Square. Some claim four demonstrators were killed with “many more” wounded; others claim that the assailant, a Basiji (unofficial “religious” police), was then beaten to death by the crowd. There is also an unconfirmed report of gunfire in three districts in north Tehran. French media put the number at the rally at up to 2 million.
Reports are sketchy as the Iranian dictators have tried to block Twitter and email, but it seems clear that the protesters are becoming bolder and more determined. The leadership is panicking as the chief Mullah has ordered an “investigation” in an effort to appease the Iranian people, but that doesn’t seem to be working.
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.
Faced with the prospect of an American adinistration that is willing to negotiate without preconditions, the Iranian leadership is starting to get worried.
Since 2006, Iran’s leaders have called for direct, unconditional talks with the United States to resolve international concerns over their nuclear program. But as an American administration open to such negotiations prepares to take power, Iran’s political and military leaders are sounding suddenly wary of President-elect Barack Obama.
“People who put on a mask of friendship, but with the objective of betrayal, and who enter from the angle of negotiations without preconditions, are more dangerous,” Hossein Taeb, deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Wednesday, according to the semiofficial Mehr News Agency.
“The power holders in the new American government are trying to regain their lost influence with a tactical change in their foreign diplomacy. They are shifting from a hard conflict to a soft attack,” Taeb said.
For Iran’s leaders, the only state of affairs worse than poor relations with the United States may be improved relations. The Shiite Muslim clerics who rule the country came to power after ousting Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a U.S.-backed autocrat, in their 1979 Islamic revolution. Opposition to the United States, long vilified as the “great Satan” here in Friday sermons, remains one of the main pillars of Iranian politics.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent Obama a congratulatory letter last week, but by Wednesday his welcoming tone had dissipated. “It doesn’t make any difference for us who comes and who goes,” he said in a speech in the northern town of Sari. “It’s their actions which are studied by the Iranian and world nations.”
Dictators and corrupt regimes need an external enemy in order to help them control their citizens. The demonization of the United States has been a useful tool in Iran, as it distracts the population from the economic misery caused by the government’s disastrous policies.
Now, the incoming Obama administration is ready to call their bluff, and the Iranian leadership realizes that they’ve put themselves in a box. If they refuse to negotiate, we gain a tremendous amount of leverage with the Europeans and Russians as we turn the screws with even tougher sanctions.
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