"I wrote Mousavi, you read Ahmadinejad"

On Monday, Mirhossein Mousavi’s supporters descended on Enghelab (Revolution) Square, and marched for several hours to Azadi (Freedom) Square (see here and here for pictures of the events).
How many were they?
Though it is always difficult to tell, most observers believe that some 500,000 Iranians demonstrated in the streets that evening, transforming the event into the most significant anti-government protest since 1979...
And perhaps it is the vivid memory of those events, which led to the fall of the Shah, and the birth of the Islamic Republic of Iran, that is making the current regime’s leaders so uncomfortable…
For, the route of last Monday’s march was the same followed by those activists thirty years ago (and who are now in power), as were many of the slogans: «Death to the dictator» and «Allah Akbar».
That is why the regime had declared all demonstrations illegal, and sent its paramilitary forces into the streets.
Even before the election, on June 10th, the authorities had unequivocally warned Mousavi supporters that attempts to intimidate and bully the regime would not be tolerated.
Yadollah Javani, head of the political office of the IRGC (the Guardians of the Revolution, a paramilitary group, and a pillar of the regime) had said:
The presence of supporters of Mirhossein Mousavi on the streets are part of the velvet revolution…Any kind of velvet revolution will not be successful in Iran.
But the people came any way, and demonstrate they did, some clad in green, the color of Mousavi’s campaign, others with placards that read, «I’ll fight, I’ll die but I’ll get my vote back», «Where is my vote?», among others…
Although peaceful, the demonstration ended violently however, as some protestors set fire to a building housing the Basij militia (a paramilitary group of volunteers, the regime’s ideological watchdog).
Militiamen with Kalashnikovs fired on the crowd, and seven people were killed…
Official media blamed the deaths on thugs, that is to say, the demonstrators.
They filled the streets again on Tuesday, though they were less numerous.
The regime, provocatively, had called all Ahmadinejad supporters to demonstrate as well, in the same area, but an hour earlier than the scheduled Mousavi event.
As such, Mousavi urged his supporters to stay home, but thousands failed to heed his call…
There are few television images of yesterday’s demonstration (only the Ahmadinejad march was covered by the official media) for the regime has banned all foreign coverage of the events in Iran. Foreign journalists are to remain in their offices and rely exclusively on official news outlets for information..
As their visas will not be renewed, they shall soon be compelled to leave the country.
With cell phone services and text messaging still blocked by the authorities, pro-Mousavi Iranians are extensively relying on Twitter to exchange information with each other, and communicate with the rest of the world.
As such, the Stare Department in Washington officially asked Twitter not to proceed with previously scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, so as not to penalize those Iranians resisting the regime (the company readily complied)!
With foreign media soon gone, and Iranian journalists forced to remain silent or relay official propaganda, the only source of independent news will be the Iranians themselves. In fact, amateur journalists are already sending material to established media outlets. A BBC World News editor, Jon Williams, told the New York Times:
We’ve been struck by the amount of video and eyewitness testimony. The days when regimes can control the flow of information are over.
This may indeed become the first major news story covered solely by its active participants.
The election and post-election events clearly demonstrate that the regime feels vulnerable and under threat.
Confronted by a coalition led by Mousavi, a pragmatist insider; Mohammad Khatami, a moderate, who was President of Iran between 1997 and 2005, and Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, a pillar of the Islamic republic since 1979, also a pragmatist, and former President (he was defeated in the second and final round by Ahmadinejad in 2005), the Supreme Leader Khamenei chose to support the incumbent, the candidate most likely to promote the interests of the regime..
Khamenei and his supporters (consisting first and foremost of the security forces) fear that a moderate government, with a pragmatic and less confrontational approach to international affairs would undermine the ideological underpinnings of the regime, and thus threaten its very existence. Any rapprochement with the West, and particularly the US, its arch enemy, the Great Satan, would be a betrayal of the regime, founded on the repudiation of the Western world, considered decadent and morally bankrupt.
Colluding with the West would inevitably lead to the development of social, political and economic exchanges, thus corrupting Iran’s society, culture and mores.
Confrontation is thus the only way to preserve the moral purity of the regime and of the nation.
In fact, greater freedoms would no doubt lead Iranians to question the legitimacy of the autocratic, clerical regime.
Faced with this unacceptable challenge, Khamenei threw his lot with Ahmadinejad, and abetted the conspiracy to rig the election.
This event, in the short history of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is unprecedented.
According to Gary Sick, a former National Security Council official, and now at Columbia University, the willingness of the regime simply to ignore reality and fabricate election results without the slightest effort to conceal the fraud represents a historic shift in Iran's Islamic revolution. All previous leaders at least paid lip service to the voice of the Iranian people. This suggests that Iran's leaders are aware of the fact that they have lost credibility in the eyes of many (most?) of their countrymen, so they are dispensing with even the pretense of popular legitimacy in favor of raw power.
Unlike the last time that a moderate was elected (President Khatami in 1997, and 2001), it seems that the fundamentalists no longer considered that they had sufficient influence and power to successfully neutralize the moderates, supported by millions of ardent activists, the Green Wave, even if they are in control of the security apparatus.
They decided they could not accept the risks involved in such a political confrontation.
A coup may have been the sole solution.
A young Iranian journalist from Tehran explained the following to Radio Free Europe:
Coup means that right now they're beating people in the streets. A coup means they didn't even count people's votes. They announced the results without opening the ballot boxes. It was sent as a circular to the state television, which announced it. Is it so difficult for the world to understand this?
The regime has thus retaliated, first by trying to intimidate the demonstrators, then by shooting some of them.
Secondly, it has arrested scores of activists, including former vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi; a former member of parliament Behzad Nabavi and reformist Saeed Hajariian.
A prominent human rights lawyer, Abdolfattah Soltani, was also arrested today in Tehran, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Sherin Ebadi told NPR. She is currently in Switzerland.
And yet, the regime still hopes to avoid a brutal confrontation, for even some of its ardent supporters objected to the heavy handed tactics of the paramilitaries.
Referring to a recent raid on the Tehran University campus, the Speaker of the Iranian parliament, Ali Larijani, said: what’s the meaning of attacking university students at midnight in their dormitory. The interior minister is responsible for this and should answer ( it should be said that Larijani was once Ahmadinejad’s chief nuclear negotiator, but resigned in 2007, after he clashed with the president over the strategy Iran should adopt in its negotiations with the West. In addition, the minister he was attacking, Mr. Mahsouli, is a staunch Ahmadinejad supporter).
In another sign of possible unrest within the establishment, a number of employees of the Interior ministry sent a letter to parliament Speaker Larijani, and to Rasfanjani, chairmen of the Council of Experts:
As dedicated employees of the Ministry of Interior, with experience in management and supervision of several elections such as the elections of Khamenei, Rafsanjani and Khatami, we announce that we fear the 10th presidential elections were not healthy .
As a result, Khamenei has made one concession: he has authorized the Guardian Council (the body that supervises elections) to proceed with a partial recount of certain ballots. Which ones, and how many is not clear. Mousavi has demanded that the election be declared nul and void, and staged anew. The Council has already rejected that option. As such, it is far from certain whether this half measure will satisfy Mousavi’s determined partisans.
What can Mousavi and his supporters do now?
They obviously have little hope of obtaining redress from the institutions, all controlled by Khamenei and the fundamentalists.
Mousavi declared that he was not very optimistic that the Council would rule in his favor. Many of its members during the election were not impartial and supported the government candidate, including the head of the Council, Ahmad Jannati, a staunch supporter of the incumbent…
Furthermore, he has little faith in Khamenei, with whom he clashed in the 1980s when he was prime minister, and the Supreme Leader President.
Nor does he have much regard for his religious credentials…
Indeed, when Khamenei was called to replace Khomeni, he was but a hojatalislam, a junior cleric, and certainly not a ayatollah.
For obvious political reasons, he was quickly promoted to this august rank…
True Islamic scholars therefore, do not consider him one of their own.
That is probably why Mousavi wrote, not to Khamenei, but to the highest clerics in Qom, the most important center of Shia scolarship, requesting that they declare the election null and void.
Bypassing, or, preferably, eliminating Khamenei may be the reformist camp’s only hope of prevailing in this struggle.
Mousavi’s powerful patron Rasfanjani, chairman of the Council of Experts (the 86-member assembly that chooses the Supreme Leader, but can also demote him), is reportedly in Qom, assessing the mood of the Council…Khamenei’s removal would greatly undermine Ahmadinejad, but could also lead to the implosion of the regime itself…Does Mousavi want to got that far?
The brutal struggles continues…How it will be resolved depends exclusively on the Iranian people.
How far are they willing to go to prevail?
An Iranian-American wrote this to the New York Times’ Roger Cohen:
The bottom line right now is whose violence threshold is higher? How much are the hard-liners willing to inflict to suppress the population and tell yet another generation to shut up? And how much are Mousavi and his supporters willing to stand to fulfill their dreams? It sounds so inhuman, but that’s what it comes down to. It’s very scary.
May Mousavi and his supporters have the necessary wisdom and fortitude to be victorious…

(the title of this post, "I wrote Mousavi, you read Ahmadenijad" refers to the fact that each voter had to write in the name of his choice on the ballot; incidentally, to make sure there would be no foul play, many Iranians brought their own pens, in case the ones made available in the polling booths contained disappearing ink...)

(the photograph on top is by Ben curtis/AP)