[12:53AM Tehran Time]
Confirmed: Multiple reports of protesters clashing with special security forces in front of IRIB, one of the regime’s state broadcasting channels.
Unconfirmed: Special regime forces trying to disperse the crowd in front of the IRIB building, but so far they have been unsuccessful.
More reports of casualties coming in from various areas of Tehran and in other cities.
Rumors are circulating that Khamenei has been transported somewhere by helicopter for his safety.
Multiple reports are coming in of martial law being declared in the city of Najafabad, the deceased Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s hometown.
The situation in Iran is in chaotic and in constant flux. It is not clear what will happen next, but with the killings by regime goons of protesters on the tenth day of the Moharram ceremony of Ashura, the people will likely be even more enraged. It is not clear what will come next, but it has been a monumental day in Iran.
Live-blog: Ashura in Iran – December 27, 2009 | Iran News Now.
Comments 29
When I lived in Baoding, China, in 1989, the whole city seemed to support the protestors in Tiananmen Square, even though Baoding is a city few people outside China have ever heard of. Within Beijing, the entire city cooperated to feed the countless students and others participating in Beijing Spring. During the spring break, my daughter and I went to Inner Mongolia, where the walls of the buildings at Inner Mongolia University were covered with shreds of big-character posters (da zi bao) that the students had put up and the officials had torn off. As for the Tiananmen Massacre itself, most of the victims were residents of the streets leading to the square, plain ordinary people who had decided to block the streets and prevent the army from getting to the square. Despite all this support, Beijing Spring failed, and the Marxist-Islamic Alliance still rules China.
And, as I have said before, my students kept asking me, “Why doesn’t President Bush say something?” G.H.W. Bush and Barack Obama are indistinguishable–at least in this respect.
December 28th, 2009 at 7:47 am
@ George Jochnowitz:
failed? or only partially a success?
December 28th, 2009 at 8:10 am
@ George Jochnowitz:
George,
What was your impression at the time as to the extent to which the average city dweller in China supported the students versus supported the government?
I would think most people, even under extremely bad governments, fear change more than they value the potential for a revolution making things better. Which is actually not necessarily a bad calculation since so many revolutions end badly, merely exchanging new tyrants for the old.
December 28th, 2009 at 8:29 am
It’s been said that the Iranian government has received advice and instruction from the Chinese on internal security.
The conventional analysis regarding China is that the security forces, in particular the units that massacred resisters, were mainly drawn from the interior of the country – they were peasants, in short, with little sympathy for the mainly urban, relatively privileged students and their supporters. In Iran, it seems that the regime, in addition to having a monopoly on arms, can also still call upon a dedicated core of fanatical supporters.
Vocal international support, not just from the U.S. but including from the U.S., would tend to raise the stakes, but would lend credibility to the movement not just as being morally in the right but as a potential replacement government. It would also make it more difficult and costly for countries like China and Russia to be materially and politically supportive, and increase confidence that the regime had no future, while the representatives of the Green Movement did have one.
December 28th, 2009 at 9:17 am
Vocal international support will certainly be forthcoming and regimes long-noted as opponents of the Iranian government are far more useful prodding other countries and international institutions to speak up and take the lead.
December 28th, 2009 at 9:36 am
fuster wrote:
Translation: Vocal, coordinated international support, including especially from the “leader of the free world,” has been lacking. In fact, the #1 international regime opponent has managed to put in doubt whether in real terms it even qualifies as such anymore.
December 28th, 2009 at 9:46 am
@ CK MacLeod:
That doubt resides in very few minds, CK.
December 28th, 2009 at 9:48 am
@ fuster:
No – I’m afraid you’re just supplying the latest variation of “if we imagine really hard that we’re on the right side, everyone else will have to recognize it.” Obama’s people and supporters, including you, can’t believe that anyone would doubt their good intentions. It doesn’t seem to matter what our government actually does. What matters to them is their subjective state about what they’re doing, or not doing. See also: Stimulus, Health Care, Financial Reform, Climate Change, Homeland Security, Israel, Honduras, and human rights all around the globe.
Furthermore, from a purely political standpoint, on the chance that the Iranian Green Movement does somehow succeed in toppling the regime, there is a cost to us in having appeared irrelevant to the outcome and afraid to take a risk for our supposed ideals.
December 28th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Sully,
My impression was that the average city dweller was totally pro-student. I should add that I spoke to a disproportionate number of people who happened to know English and were therefore not a representative sample. But I can speak Chinese (depending on how one defines “speak”), and the monolingual Chinese people I spoke to were also totally pro-student.
fuster,
China had opened up before 1989. When I taught there in 1984, everybody wore Mao jackets, one couldn’t easily tell who was a man and who was a woman, and one never saw a single boy and a single girl walk together on campus. In 1989, Mao jackets had absolutely disappeared, boys and girls not only walked together but even held hands, and strangers spoke to me about politics even before the first sit-ins began in mid-April. Marxist capitalism had begun, and everyone was saying, “I love money; money is so beautiful.” I assume people think so in the USA as well, but somehow, one doesn’t hear it expressed.
December 28th, 2009 at 9:56 am
@ CK MacLeod:
Stick to the issue,CK, and leave your other stuff out.
Do you really want to argue that it’s unclear that Obama is opposed to the Iranian regime and its efforts to acquire nukes and to threaten other nations in the middle east and central asia?
December 28th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Yes, “Mr. Anchovy” and we’ve given you all the signals he has sent over the last year. You want to ignore that in opposition to all evidence
December 28th, 2009 at 10:07 am
@ George Jochnowitz:
George, I very much enjoy hearing about your impressions from your time in China.
What I was thinking was that I would like to know if you think that the student protests and violent crackdown made clear that the regime wouldn’t endure if it continued to shoot protesters.
From a world away. I had the idea that the regime was divided in finding a response and was further divided by the one chosen.
December 28th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Thanks, fuster. If you want to read more about my memories of China, they are in THE BLESSED HUMAN RACE, which you can find on the Wall.
It seemed absolutely clear to me that the regime wouldn’t endure. Somehow, it is enduring.
December 28th, 2009 at 10:14 am
narc, what you have is a statements that he’s made that you don’t like or statements that he hasn’t made that you would have liked.
You ignore nearly everything that’s being done and concentrate on semi-willful misconstruction of gestures.
December 28th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Speak, Smidge. What is the “everything that’s being done” that narciso is ignoring?
The issue here is support of Iran’s Green movement. Please make the case that Obama is doing something significant enough that it would be legitimate to say narciso is “ignoring” it.
December 28th, 2009 at 10:33 am
@ fuster:
Fuster, no one in the world had any doubt or even the scintilla of an argument to make about where Ronald Reagan (and Pope John Paul) stood on Solidarity. In addition to making Solidarity a major rhetorical point and a centerpiece of his offensive against the Evil Empire, Reagan had material support provided to the movement.
Aside from quietly broadcasting positive vibes (according to you), making minimally credible threats while accepting one humiliation after another and appearing desperate to talk or to get any deal, no matter how empty, the Administration has done about as much to support the protesters as you or I have. There is some evidence that its failures in this regard, and conspicuous acts like defunding the human rights group, have been noted by at least some among the movement, and have amounted to discouragement – “Obama, are you with us or them?”
The constant reply from Obama apologists is that we’d hurt the protesters by making them appear to be U.S. surrogates. There is no evidence for this proposition – just a subjective feeling and a theory. See above.
December 28th, 2009 at 10:33 am
What has been done, seriously, for the cause of nonproliferation, we had a series of useless negotiation, after the death of Neda
Sultan, we almost had a barbecue with Iranian diplomats (read
MOIS) the human rights monitoring office was shut down, they
are now gentling tap dancing around the issue of sanction. I’ve
heard of passive-aggressive, but this is ridiculous
December 28th, 2009 at 10:36 am
@ CK MacLeod:
No Ronald Reagan claptrap when discussing the Iranians,….please.
December 28th, 2009 at 10:53 am
@ fuster:
The perennial issue hopping frog
Emits a surprising shout,
Stick to the issue, CK,
And leave your other stuff out.
December 28th, 2009 at 10:56 am
@ fuster:
Really fuster. You can disagree with a lot of Reagan’s policies and be reasonable; but you’re going up against certified life on the line heroes who walked the walk in calling his efforts to successful enspirit the anti-Soviet resistance “claptrap.”
When did President Obama give his “Tear Down This Wall” or rather “Stop Stoning Those Women” speech?
December 28th, 2009 at 11:04 am
@ Sully:
Yeah, I shouldn’t be allowed to get away with that.
(work up something other than shout, more hiss or grumble)
December 28th, 2009 at 11:04 am
@ Sully:
Reagan me no Reagan regarding Iran.
December 28th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Solidarity won, and the Berlin Wall fell, in 1990, when Old Bush was president–despite the fact that Old Bush feared democracy in places like China and East Europe, and supported the Commuinist dictators with his silence.
The Democratic and Republican presidents don’t split neatly on the question of supporting or opposing the Marxist-Islamic alliance.
December 28th, 2009 at 11:07 am
But the building blocks had been set down, by Pipes, by that old trade union veterans Kirkland and Brown. by Casey, et al. This didn’t just happen by accident
December 28th, 2009 at 11:12 am
@ George Jochnowitz:
Well of course the Ds and Rs don’t split nicely – every major and minor gesture Reagan ever made against the Soviets, every moment now remembered fondly or pointed to by the dissidents as helpful, was strenuously resisted within his own party and within his own administration – but was even more energetically opposed by the Democrats, with a couple of exceptions even by the supposed Democrat hawks like Sam Nunn. Old Bush was notorious for seeking to keep the various anti-Communist revolutions from “spinning out of control,” famously urging Ukraine not to get too uppity. But by the time he had taken office, the ball was already rolling downhill.
To be fair, not that I’m terribly of a mind to be, Reagan’s stance toward the Soviets under Gorbachev in arms negotiation, including agreements like the zero option on Euromissiles, was often greeted with alarm and withering criticism by many conservatives, as well as by allies in Europe like Thatcher and Kohl.
Back to the present, if we experience one of the great strokes of geopolitical luck of the ages, and the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime falls and is replaced by a more pro-Western, pacific, internationalist regime in a relatively clean and timely manner, then the fusters of the world will try to credit the Cairo speech and “smart power,” which would be the equivalent of crediting Bush 41’s “crisis management” for having brought down the Berlin Wall.
December 28th, 2009 at 11:27 am
@ CK MacLeod:
Unlike some people, CK, I don’t credit speeches with bringing down regimes.
Also, unlike some people, I won’t try to get by with saying that what’s happening in Iran is due to luck.
December 28th, 2009 at 11:32 am
fuster wrote:
When last we discussed what led to the current situation in Iran, you broke off after I suggested that it was a product of multiple factors, almost none of which the Obami have had anything positive to do with. So, here we are, with Iranian blood in the streets, protests spreading, and the US on vacation. It’s like a sad sequel to the election fraud movie during which the big 0 had to be pushed eventually to make a statement – then went right back to searching for something, anything that would appease the Iranian regime and could be sold as peace in our time.
Yes, I’m sure “something” is forthcoming. Fingers crossed it’s something that begins to make up lost ground, and that doesn’t equate with a second whiff at the plate.
December 28th, 2009 at 11:44 am
True, like “we will bear any burden, oppose any foe,” had with the Kennedy administration, had on fate of the isle of my birth, after
the Bay of Pigs invasion
December 28th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Yet another example that doesn’t validate the Obama approach to Iran:http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/12/us_releases_dangerou.php
December 31st, 2009 at 11:54 am
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