Kevin is still away. He’ll be back on Tuesday. I’m filling in until then and will be blogging from the Personal Democracy Forum conference on Monday.
On Sunday, thousands of Iranians protested against the government, gathering at the Goba mosque in Tehran. Mir Hossein Mousvai’s wife and presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, were part of the demonstration. Mousvai, according to some reports, addressed the crowd via a cellphone. But this rally, smaller than previous demonstrations, will likely not cause the headline writers of The New York Times to reconsider the title on Sunday’s dispatch from Iran: “In Tehran, a Mood of Melancholy Descends.”
It does seem that the opposition might have lost steam–though we ought to recall that it took the last Iranian revolution two years to take hold and take power. On Sunday, a Tehran filmmaker I’ve met via email sent me the below dispatch. This person is a Karroubi supporter and wants those of us in the West to realize that not all the opposition Iranians are Mousavi fans. It’s a good point, since conventional media coverage often does turn complicated, full-of-nuance situations into binary, easy-to-shorthand episodes. S/he believes the opposition could regain momentum in the days ahead and writes:
It’s been said both Mousavi and Karroubi are under house arrest, but every once in a while they are allowed to appear in public. Karroubi stayed in the Goba mosque just half an hour while he joined protesters and walked away with them. I think he couldn’t stay more.
Well it’s like new wave of demonstrations gonna start in next days, people talk about making a long human chain tomorrow. New faces coming up, just like [cleric] Hadi Ghaffari and some Ayattollahs. There is video and audio file of Ghaffari’s speech against Khamenei on the Internet. It’s just released today and I think in couple of days the whole country know about it and it may encourage people to go on.
People were waiting for Hashemi Rafsanjani’s speech. They counted on him to stand in front of Khamenei. But after two weeks he spoke today and in a very moderate way supported Khamenei. Now it’s like the waiting is over and there is no middle path to go.
You know , I think the government also enjoys this situation! I mean if they wanted to steal votes they could do it in a more convincing way. They could simply say Ahmadinejad has 500,000 more votes than Mousavi. They want to make the people angry. Ahmadinejad calls people who voted for other candidates “dust.” Khamenei threathens the nation while he could have made a more cautious speech.They attack ordinary people. I don’t know what the hell is going on behind the scenes, but pieces of puzzle just don’t match.
I think Mousavi was not the man this nation needed, All he talked about before election was that “I have these plans because Khomeini wanted this for this society”. It’s sad the people who were pissed off at religion suddenly started repeating his religious slogans. People wanted a secular government but since Mousavi came everybody just forgot that aim.
What really upsets me is that we were 13 million voted for Karroubi. We protest the election results. Most of the politician arrested in past days were supporters of Karroubi, but the whole world consider us in the opposition as Mousavi’s supporters!
Those of us watching from far away cannot easily suss out what is happening in Iran, and alas, the same applies to the nation’s own citizens.
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