Tehran

The above photo, from Getty Images, was taken Tuesday in Tehran, Iran, during the third day of massive street protests.

This despite warnings from political, religious and military leaders (the three tend to be intertwined in Iran) that such protests are forbidden. I know little about defeated reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, but I find the courage and defiant determination of these people beautiful, humbling and inspiring.

By the third day of these demonstrations, Iran's establishment was struggling to regain control of the situation -- to put these people back under control. Foreign journalists were forbidden from recording, photographing or attending street demonstrations.

So the people in the photograph above were forbidden to demonstrate and the photographer was forbidden to take their picture. Yet there it is and there they are. Just look at them.

 

Comments

[Personal Failure]

I suppose it would be a bit cruel to let them know what happens after they've had democracy for a while?

[Roadstergal]

How can people like L&J continue to think themselves 'persecuted' after seeing a scene like this?

I am, like you, humbled.

[solitarykitsch]

That may be the most beautiful picture I have seen in a very long time. Count me among the humbled.

[Andy]

Count me in too.\; This is absolutely inspiring.

[Lori]

I suppose it would be a bit cruel to let them know what happens after they've had democracy for a while?

In fairness, they're not trying to have a democracy like ours. The protesters aren't reformers as we would think of the term. They're basically trying to affirm the Iranian Revolution.

Iranian politics are nothing like ours but in general the citizens feel that the system gives them an appropriate voice in their government. Their complaint is that they spoke and the government obviously chose not to listen.

And it is very humbling that they are willing to take such great risks to make themselves heard. This is political courage---the willingness to be at risk, not the willingness to shoot opponents.

[Jessica]

wow. Just wow.

[lonespark]

Well said, Lori.

[Nic]

May all the gods protect them and reward their courage.

[schism]

How can people like L&J continue to think themselves 'persecuted' after seeing a scene like this?

Because their idea of persecution is people not doing what they say.

[Adrenalin Tim]

defeated reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi

Make that allegedly defeated. The demonstrations are occurring in protest of very suspicious election results.

[Lee Ratner]

The protests in Iran are amazing and I'd just like to voice my support for the protestors supporting Mr. Mousavi. Like Fred, I do not know much about him but he was to be better than the raving Jew-hater currently holding the Iranian Presidency. I really hopes it does not end up like the June 4th Movement in China. I'm not really optismistic about this ending well though.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are being really counter-productive about this. The worse thing for the Reformers is for them to be linked in the slightest way to the United States. Obama's stance is the correct one for America to take. Some Republicans are openly calling for regime change. Do any of them think?

[Augustine]

@Lee: Those republicans want the reformers to fail, since they need a big bad Iran to point to as an enemy. An Iran that is actually willing to talk would be their worst nightmare, because if Obama successfully negotiates a peace agreement between Iran and Israel what is going to happen to their apocalypse? (Or their oil/arms deals, for the cynically-minded).

[Hobbes]

if Obama successfully negotiates a peace agreement between Iran and Israel what is going to happen to their apocalypse?

I think that would make Obama the Antichrist in their minds. They'd wonder what happened to their Rapture.

[ako]

It's beautiful. Although I'm a bit scared of how it's going to end.

[Ross]

How much do we know about the "suspicious"-ness of the results? I mean, good for Tehran protesting and all, but, like, "This election did not go the way we wanted, so we're going to go tothe streets and teabag protest, maybe to the point of civil war" sounds kinda like they're just doing what the republicans threatened to do back in november.

This is stirring, humbling, uplifting social whatever *if the results are really illegitimate*. If they're not, it's jsut a bunch of sore losers trying to use violence to get their way.

[Nic]

if Obama successfully negotiates a peace agreement between Iran and Israel what is going to happen to their apocalypse?

I think that would make Obama the Antichrist in their minds. They'd wonder what happened to their Rapture.

It actually did come in '88/'00?

[Nic]

Or rather, that should read "Maybe it actually did come in '88/'00?"

Oy.

[Jeff]

The protestors aren't looking for reform in leadership (or at least they weren't when they started. Mousavi is pretty close to the Ahmadinejad in most regards -- there's a lot of in-fighting amongst the various powers as I understand it, with different factions of the elite supporting on or the other.

They had open debates, they had freedom to assemble, they were told they would have free elections. They didn't and it was clumsily obvious that they didn't.

By cracking down hard, Ahmadinejad may be weakening support for his own groups.

But the best thing the US can do is stand off -- and I'm glad we got Obama instead of either the male or female warmonger.

[Mike Timonin]

tangential observation - I don't know if the ads are the same for everyone, but today there's a new one, replacing the "Christian dating site" ad which has been there on and off - now it's a Muslim matrimonial site ad. Coincidence?

[Jeff]

[[now it's a Muslim matrimonial site ad. Coincidence?]]

These ads are usually triggered by key-words. So not too coincidental.

[Adrenalin Tim]

Ross: This is stirring, humbling, uplifting social whatever *if the results are really illegitimate*. If they're not, it's jsut a bunch of sore losers trying to use violence to get their way.

I understand, and ultimately, we don't know - especially considering the attempted crackdown on media, internet and communications.

NYT's Lede blog is a good source for what information we can get, as well as Andrew Sullivan. This from "Eric Hooglund, a professor of politics at Bates College and an expert of rural Iran" (on the Lede blog):

Is it possible that rural Iran, where less than 35 percent of the country’s population lives, provided Ahmadinejad the 63 percent of the vote he claims to have won? That would contradict my own research in Iran’s villages over the past 30 years, including just recently.

Oh, and as for "trying to use violence" - they're unarmed, and largely protesting in silence.

[Spearmint]

"This election did not go the way we wanted, so we're going to go to the streets and teabag protest, maybe to the point of civil war" sounds kinda like they're just doing what the republicans threatened to do back in november.

No.

They had open debates, they had freedom to assemble, they were told they would have free elections. They didn't and it was clumsily obvious that they didn't.

This is what they're pissed about. It's not that Ahmadinejad won- he may well have won the election legitimately- it's that there was insultingly blatant fraud. They're not protesting the election results, they're protesting the failure of the democratic process and the fact that their government didn't even have the good manners to try to conceal it. (It's clear the results are completely screwy- they're tens of percentage points off the polls and they were being declared before it was physically possible for the ballots to be counted. What's not clear is whether this changed the outcome of the election.)

That's why the Iranians are heroes and the teabaggers are a bunch of spoiled two-year olds throwing a tantrum because the American electorate wouldn't give them another cookie after they dropped the first one on the floor.

[Alexandra Erin]

Hey, some precincts had voter turnout as high as 120% or 140%. All democracies should be so healthy!

[Lori]

What Jeff said.

It's not that Mousavi is significantly less conservative than Ahmadinejad. He is however less crazy than Ahmadinejad. A big part of this election was about how Iran would interact with the rest of the world. A significant portion of the population wants greater openess and they can't get that with Ahmadinejad as president. As of yesterday there are signs of a growing split amongst the mullahs over the election, which amounts to a split over the future of the country. I think it's anyone's guess how this will ultimately turn out.

@Ross: About the suspiciousness of the results---they've very suspicious. Nate Silver lays it out really clearly at fivethrityeight. Ahmadinejad supposedly won the home districts of both Mousavi and the 3rd place finisher Rezaee. That did not happen in any legitimate way. Nate has several good posts about it on the site http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

I don't think that Republicans who are complaining about Obama's reaction actually want the protests to fail. I don't think they want the protests to succeed either. They are supremely indifferent to the actual outcome for Iranians because they only care about the outcome for themselves. No matter what happens and no matter what Obama does or does not do their only interest is in bitching about it. They simply want to play the same old, same old US political script about how you can't trust a Democrat with foreign policy because they're all wimps and only manly man Republicans know how to bend the rest of the world to fit US interests.

Me bitter? Not at all. Why do you ask?

Something worth noting: Look at the way the young woman in the top picture is wearing her headscarf. That is a huge political statement. It's illegal for her to be showing anywhere near that much hair. Protests aside the police could pull her off the street for that alone.

They've done it to many others in the last few years as a result of a quiet but persistent struggle between young women and the government. The women push the scarves further and further back until the government cracks down. Then they wear the scarves conservatively until the crisis blows over and they start pushing it again. The scarves go back and forth like a tide and every woman showing her hair knows exactly what she is risking.

[EarBucket]

I put together this video with footage from the protests yesterday.

[konrad_arflane]

Re: the legitimacy of the election result, there's a leaked letter making the rounds (allegedly from the minister of the interior to ayatollah Khamenei) which contains the information that Mousavi won the election with around 19 million votes to Ahmadinejad's 5. Oh, and Ahmadinejad came in third at the polls.

The legitimacy of that document, however, has not yet been ascertained.

[hapax]

[housekeeping hijack]

Fred, if you're reading the comments, your link to Atrios is broken. The address should be http://www.eschatonblog.com/

Oh, and I notice that you've removed James Wolcott from your blogroll, but you had a bad link for a long time there, too. If you ever want to add him back, the link is www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott

[/housekeeping]

[Alexandra Erin]

konrad_arflane, I'd be inclined to doubt the legitimacy of that memo simply because there would be no reason for them to have made a separate, accurate count. It would have been undertaking additional effort to create a paper trail that would ultimately undermine their goal.

[Froborr]

Is anybody else massively creeped out by the guy in the green mask behind the young woman with the sign?

[Tehanu]

Some Republicans are openly calling for regime change. Do any of them think?

No. Not ever.

This has been another edition of Snappy Answers to Rhetorical Questions.

[joel hanes]

I don't know much about Mousavi

Here

href="http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2009/06/the-zahra-factor.html

is something you might find interesting: Mousavi's wife is a public intellectual and their marriage is an equal partnership. The hard-liners find this inappropriate in a woman.

[Froborr]

Some Republicans are openly calling for regime change. Do any of them think?

No. Not ever.

That's not true! Republicans don't just think, they double-think! That's, like, twice as much thinking!

[Grogs]

[b]Re: the legitimacy of the election result, there's a leaked letter making the rounds (allegedly from the minister of the interior to ayatollah Khamenei) which contains the information that Mousavi won the election with around 19 million votes to Ahmadinejad's 5. Oh, and Ahmadinejad came in third at the polls.

The legitimacy of that document, however, has not yet been ascertained.[/b]

Wow, that's so bad it's laughable. Whoever faked that should be ashamed of themselves. Ahmadinejad was up something like 2 to 1 in the only polling data we have. Even if we buy into the possibility that most of the people who claimed they were undecided or refused to answer (~25% of the respondents), them maybe Mousavi pulled off a 60/40 win, but a 5:1 victory? That would mean the polling was off by an order of magnitude! And the 3rd place candidate in the polling had somewhere around 1/5 of Mousavi's numbers and 1/10 of Ahmadinejad, which makes the whole thing just that much less believable.

[Dymphna]

Froborr, you may or may not know this, but a lot of folks are wearing masks because they are afraid of being identified and persecuted for participating in the rallies.

So I'm more creeped out by the fact that he needs to wear one.

[Lee Ratner]

The Republicans have just given me an answer on their thinking today with their health care proposal. It was a four page memo without details. I can know safely say that the Republicans do not think. They have just repeated the budget fiasco.

[Lynn]

Speaking of grace photos 28/29 in this set blew me away: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/irans_disputed_election.html#photo28

Nothing says "we're the good guys" like helping the cop that was beating/shooting at you escape harm.

[Spearmint]

a lot of folks are wearing masks because they are afraid of being identified and persecuted for participating in the rallies.

As to that, I'm wondering if it's such a good idea to have protesters' faces posted? That's not directed at Fred, really, the entire blogsphere is doing it, but I am a little concerned. It's all very well to put a human face on what's happening in Iran, but what if the Iranian security forces are scanning the English media and they recognize someone? Presumably right now they're too busy beating people on the streets, but at some point this is going to die down and they're going to want names. Google cache could endanger a lot of people.

[mountainguy]

I am humbled too.

BTW, the gorl in the first pic is really pretty

[Lori]

Froborr, you may or may not know this, but a lot of folks are wearing masks because they are afraid of being identified and persecuted for participating in the rallies.

So I'm more creeped out by the fact that he needs to wear one.

It's not only protesters in Iran who are covering their faces. Iranian Americans here in DC protested outside the Iranian & Russian Embassies today. Many of them covered their faces because the security cameras were capturing the whole protest and they still have family members in Iran who could be at risk of retaliation.

So yeah, it's the need to cover up that's creepy.

[Technomad]

May I ask why, when protesters agree with you all, they're heroes, but when they don't, they're two-year-olds throwing tantrums? Coming from people whom I'd bet were howling in 2000 about "President-Select," "Jail to the Thief," and like that, this strikes me as the howlingest kind of hypocrisy.

[Eric b]

Some Republicans think. But, we aren't really voting for the virtual clown car of candidates we are getting right now.

[ako]

May I ask why, when protesters agree with you all, they're heroes, but when they don't, they're two-year-olds throwing tantrums? Coming from people whom I'd bet were howling in 2000 about "President-Select," "Jail to the Thief," and like that, this strikes me as the howlingest kind of hypocrisy.

It's hypocrisy to have different opinions on what people say when the content of their message is different? I respect the right of anyone to protest peacefully, and I think the teabaggers should enjoy their full legal right to protest and not be silenced. I just think that what they're saying is often stupid. There's a difference between "The election was stolen, and my votes weren't honestly counted" and "The guy who won sucks!"

[Andrew]

Forgive me for delurking here for a moment, but I thought this should be linked:

"Revolutionary Road", a blog from inside Iran
http://shooresh1917.blogspot.com/

Many more photos, videos, and information posted about what is happening in Tehran.

[Not Really Here]

Technomad-

Considering the fact that a full recount in Florida would, in all likelihood, found Gore to be the winner in that state (remember, he lost the electoral vote, but won the popular vote) and the Supreme Court stepped in to stop the counting and declare G.W. the winner...

And then there were those purges of "convicts" from the voter rolls, the vast majority of whom had never been convicted of any crime, but who were mostly black, and black folk tend to overwhelmingly vote Democratic...

The 2000 election was stolen. No two ways about it.

So was '04.

Oh, and Iran did have democracy for a while, until Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh decided to nationalize Iran's oil industry, which at the time was under the control of the company now known as British Petroleum. So, of course, the U.S. and British governments decided to engineer a coup, and installed the Shah (Reza I, IIRC), thus returning the country to dictatorial monarchy.

[Lori]

It's hypocrisy to have different opinions on what people say when the content of their message is different? I respect the right of anyone to protest peacefully, and I think the teabaggers should enjoy their full legal right to protest and not be silenced. I just think that what they're saying is often stupid. There's a difference between "The election was stolen, and my votes weren't honestly counted" and "The guy who won sucks!"

Exactly. No one I know said that the teabaggers shouldn't be allowed to protest. We did point out that their name was an invitation to mockery, that many of their talking points made very little sense and that others were flat out false. Combine that with the fact that they weren't risking anything but ridicule by turning out to teabag in the streets and the heroism involved in the two protests is obviously quite different.

[Adrenalin Tim]

Ahmadinejad was up something like 2 to 1 in the only polling data we have. Even if we buy into the possibility that most of the people who claimed they were undecided or refused to answer (~25% of the respondents)

No.

The poll that appears in today's op-ed shows a 2 to 1 lead in the thinnest sense: 34 percent of those polled said they'd vote for Ahmadinejad, 14 percent for Mousavi. That leaves 52 percent unaccounted for. In all, 27 percent expressed no opinion in the election, and another 15 percent refused to answer the question at all. Six percent said they'd vote for none of the listed candidates; the rest for minor candidates.
-source

[Dymphna]

Lori beat me to it. Heroism = participating in demonstrations in which people are getting beaten, shot at, even killed, and for which you may be hunted down, carried away in the night, imprisoned, or disappeared. Heroism is not holding a cardboard sign at the corner of State and Main.

The closest I've come to witnessing that kind of heroism was when I attended an incredibly contentious school board meeting with a group of Native Americans protesting the school's mascot imagery, and people were actually getting into fistfights outside. The protesters - about 100 of them - had to file out along with about 400 other, mostly white people. Every protester stood out and every one was a potential target. That was heroism.

The high school student who started the whole thing was receiving death threats and getting denounced as a fraud and a loser by political opponents in front of a significant portion of his fellow students. Everyone in town knew where he lived. And he showed up and spoke up and held his own. That was f**ing heroism.

Sending people teabags in the mail or chanting slogans in the town square is just political theater. That can be very valuable, mind you, but heroism it ain't.

[Dymphna]

I should have said "holding a cardboard sign at State and Main is not heroism." There now, makes much more sense.

[malpollyon]

Technomad, are you seriously telling me you don't understand the difference between risking life and limb in a violent theocracy to protest the obvious theft of an election and a protest in a free country? Seriously, you don't think there might be a substantive difference between the two cases other than whether or not Fred disagrees with them.

[wendy]

How much do we know about the "suspicious"-ness of the results?

40 million people voted, most of them on paper ballots. No optical scan, no machine calibration. 40 million pieces of paper. To be handcounted.

"Results" were announced within 3 hours after the polls closed.

It was a remarkably consistent 68-32, across all districts. Including Mousevi's hometown, and the other opposition candidate's hometown. It was about as believable as if John McCain had registered landslide margins on the south side of Chicago.

And y'know, they could have pulled off the fraud if they'd been subtle enough to be plausible. Declare M and A to have gotten in the mid-40's each and it's a runoff. Let the regime's favored A win the runoff in a 51-49 squeaker. Nobody would have questioned it.