Nail Biter in Iran

Read Michael Ledeen's updates on the demonstrations that took place today in Iran. Some horrific accounts as well as some encouraging ones.

Report from Times Online (London):

"As darkness fell on baking, dust-shrouded Tehran tonight an army of riot police and hardline basiji militiamen used batons, gun butts and tear gas to beat back thousands of Iranians converging on the city centre.

"The security presence was massive. It was like a military occupation," one witness told The Times. "They were clubbing the hell out of people."

The greater victory belonged to the demonstrators, however. Male and female, some quite old, they came armed with nothing more than a burning sense of injustice. They defied the risk of serious physical injury, and the very real possibility of arrest, incarceration and torture. They did this to show the world that their resistance to Iran's brutal and illegitimate government has not been extinguished."

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"The regime did its best to prevent fresh manifestions of public anger today. It took advantage of the dust storms that have smothered the capital this week to close universities, offices and businesses, and to encourage people to leave the city. It shut down the text messaging system, and Morteza Tamadon, Tehran's governor, warned that demonstrations inspired by "anti-revolutionary networks" would be "trampled under the feet" of the security forces.

The demonstrators came anyway — not in the massive numbers of the earlier protests, and not with the banners or camera phones that would make them instant targets, but with even greater courage."

An absolutely must read.

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