The Showdown Begins in Iran
It’s on. Ayatollah Khamenei has banned demonstrations against the regime and the Iranian people, and Mousavi, have rejected them. This is civil disobedience at its best. The security forces have been successful at dividing up the demonstrators so they don’t combine into one mass, but with enough forces, they will certainly link up. But what then? Will the masses just march forward as the security forces step back, inch-by-inch, until they find themselves outside of Tehran? Demonstrating in one place just won’t do it.
Here’s some updates I’ve received from Iranians:
- Every police station has a bus of Basiji next to it. The government does not trust the local police.
- Last night, the protests took a very religious tone, with people shouting “God is Great” from their rooftops throughout the night.
Click “read more” for some very gruesome photos sent to me that are on protest signs. The first photo is supposedly of the dead fetus that was in the body of a mother who was shot in the stomach by the security forces. The second photo is of a man killed at Azadi Square on June 15. The third shows a dead body in the back of a car, and the fourth shows five buried demonstrators.
Update: The photo of the dead fetus of a mother killed by Iranian security forces is a hoax. The same photo made the rounds years ago claiming it was the child of a woman killed in Iraq. Thank you to the reader who pointed this out to me. Nevertheless, the photo is making its way around Iranians, as several sent it to me.
