The two men cradled the woman as she collapsed backwards onto the street, a
pool of blood at her feet. The men pressed their hands on to a bullet wound
in her neck as her hands fell limp above her shoulders.
Within seconds, her eyes rolled sideways and her pale features were obscured
by haemorrhaging from her nose and mouth. Her would-be rescuers shrieked in
panic. There was nothing they could do to save her.
The scene, captured on a number of mobile phones, unfolded yesterday in Tehran
as protesters fought running battles with riot police and militia on the
streets of the Iranian capital.
Another video showed hundreds of people milling about in a street with fires
burning in the road. Some were collecting rocks. A helicopter buzzed
overhead.
At least five shots were heard and soon after a group of men raced through the
crowd carrying a man by his arms and legs. His head was lolling. He was laid
on the ground and a crowd gathered. A large blood stain filled the centre of
his white shirt. He lay still and appeared to be dead.
Yet more footage emerged of young men throwing stones at riot police. A number
shouted “Death to Khamenei!”, underlining the seriousness of the protests.
As supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei traditionally occupies an
untouchable position in Iranian society.
There was also video of a member of the security forces who had been knocked
off his motorbike. A black-clad woman tried to protect him as a number of
people, many of them wearing suits, kicked and punched him. A motorbike was
on fire a few feet away.
Last night these videos revealed the extent of the defiance of the regime that
has sprung from last week’s disputed presidential election. Yesterday tens
of thousands of supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claim Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, the incumbent, stole victory in the election, poured on to the
streets again. They were confronted with water cannon, tear gas and targeted
gunfire.
The largest crowd gathered near the University of Tehran, after evading a riot
police cordon which had tried to disperse them. Soon a volley of 20-30 shots
rang out - which state television later claimed were warning shots - and the
group broke up into roaming knots of protesters. Street battles then erupted
as they took the fight to police with rocks.
As night fell it was unclear how many people had been killed or injured in the
clashes. What was certain was that Iran was entering uncharted territory.
On Friday, Khamenei had said opposition leaders would “be held accountable for
all the violence, bloodshed and looting” if they encouraged more rallies. It
was a clear threat to Mousavi and his supporters.
“It must be determined at the ballot box what the people want and what they
don’t want, not on the streets,” Khamenei told the thousands gathered for
Friday prayers at the University of Tehran. He threw down the gauntlet. “If
the things I have said now are not observed, I will be back here talking in
a far more serious tone.”
His seriousness was apparent yesterday with the crackdown on the protesters.
Nevertheless, the popular will, represented by the crowds’ willingness to
risk their safety by taking to the streets yesterday, appeared undimmed. The
Islamic Republic of Iran was facing the worst crisis in its 30-year history.
What gave so many ordinary citizens the courage to take to the streets in
numbers not seen since Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah in 1979? Where
was this heading? Will yesterday’s events presage a brutal crackdown, or are
they just a pause in an extraordinary display of “people power”?
ARTEMIS, a 41-year-old Tehra-ni woman, is the proud holder of a law degree,
but one who has never been allowed to work. She was clear about why she
joined the million-plus men, women and children who took to the streets of
Tehran last Monday.
“People want freedom and justice,” she said. “They stole the vote. No one in
his right mind believes this result.”
She said she had been afraid to voice criticism before. “The neighbours listen
to you, and people go to prison just for what they say, or what they write.
But this is contagious. What you are seeing, all these people, this comes
from 30 years of oppression and now we have had enough.”
Gathering in Revolution Square in the summer sun, they walked miles to Freedom
Square. Nobody believed the election result, which gave Ahmadinejad more
than 60% of the vote in what was expected to be a knife-edge contest, and
the sense of anger and betrayal was palpable. “Where is my vote?” asked
placards held aloft. People walked with determination, emboldened by their
sense of injustice.
Shouts of “Down with the dictator!” and “Death to the Taliban in Kabul and
Tehran!” - echoes of the 1979 chant “Death to the Shah!” - filled the air.
Green ribbons, banners and wristbands adorned the marchers.
Mousavi’s supporters had been ridiculed by supporters of the regime as merely
the wealthy young crowd from the northern, tree-shaded neighbourhoods of
Tehran. Last Monday, however, saw the old and the young, designer-clad
groups of young women side by side with workers in worn clothes and
government clerks in suits.
A young woman with a matching Burberry scarf and handbag walked between an
elderly man and woman, a hand in each of theirs as they stared in
wonderment. A middle-aged man in a suit walked carrying his briefcase, grey
balding head held high.
“Look at all the white hairs here,” pointed out Siamak, a 28-year-old
mechanical engineer. “All of Tehran is here. I think Khamenei will not sleep
tonight.”
They passed down the boulevard for hours.
“I was afraid to speak at all before. I thought we were a tiny minority,” said
Mona, a 24-year-old software designer in the oversized designer sunglasses
favoured by Tehran’s fashionable young women, and a tight red “manteau”, the
overcoat that gives a scant nod to the law that women must cover their heads
and bodies in public. “But now I feel we are the majority. I am not afraid
any more. For me, fear is over.”
That afternoon Mousavi appeared in Freedom Square for the first time since he
had heard in the early hours of last Saturday that Ahmadinejad had won the
presidency.
He had been a grey, uncharismatic figure during the campaign, buoyed in the
polls mostly by his wife, Zahra Rahna-vard, a scholar and artist with a
mischievous sense of humour. She set the tone by holding his hand in public
on the campaign trail, endearing the couple to the younger generation.
Now he stood in Freedom Square on the top of a car, dressed in a
blue-and-white striped shirt, shouting defiance over a handheld
loud-speaker. “We want respect. We will reclaim our rights,” he promised a
cheering crowd. “We fight on!”
There was tragedy to come that night. As the demonstration wound down, youths
wandered home in the darkened streets. The riot police and Basiji volunteer
militia had disappeared in the face of such numbers during the day, but they
returned with a vengeance.
A swarm of Basiji riding two to a motorcycle attacked one group of youths
walking back to the university. “We tried to run, but they caught us,” said
Shabab, 24, a computer science student in jeans and a T-shirt, a green
ribbon on his wrist and a huge bandage on the back of his head.
“They were bastards,” he said, pulling a bloodied sweat-shirt out of his
rucksack. “When they saw I was bleeding they beat me even more.”
Other students attacked a Basiji headquarters north of Freedom Square with
molotov cocktails and stones. The reply was devastating - gunmen from inside
the building fired a fusillade of bullets, killing seven and wounding 26.
They were not the first deaths of the new era in Iran. The students had
attacked the Basiji building because their dormitories had been raided
before dawn that morning. Basiji crashed through the doors of sleeping
undergraduates, ransacking bedrooms and destroying the books in the library.
Five students died in the raid.
The violence was not all on one side. During Thursday’s protest, I saw a
crowd of men and women descend on a Basiji who tore down a poster of
Mousavi. They beat and kicked him viciously while others on the march
yelled: “Don’t hit him! Don’t beat the Basiji!” He was eventually allowed to
limp away.
The sight of hijab-wearing teenage girls walking away sweating from punching
him as hard as they could was just as disconcerting as the sight of the
girls partying all night in the heady days before the vote.
The parallels with 1979 cannot have been lost on the regime, nor Mousavi, who
served as prime minister under Khomeini from 1981 to 1989.
The uprising against the Shah spiralled ever higher on a cycle of funerals and
deaths.
Demonstrators would take to the streets to mourn fellow protesters shot by the
Shah’s security forces, suffer losses themselves, and take to the streets
again for the new victims.
By Thursday last week, the cycle appeared to be repeating itself. As news of
the deaths filtered out slowly on Tuesday and Wednesday, anger grew.
Even members of the national football team, including the captain, Mehdi
Mahdavikia, wore green wristbands during a World Cup qualifying match
against South Korea, which was shown on state-run television, to signal
their support of the protests.
Impromptu shrines were set up around the city. A new march was planned for
Thursday: this time the mood was different.
Earlier in the week the rallies had been rumbustious affairs; now they were
silent in commemoration of the dead so as not to give the authorities any
excuse to attack. Any marchers trying to start a chorus of “Down with the
dictator!” were quickly shushed.
Shunning the bright colours of earlier protests, most women now wore black
hijabs and black clothing. One marcher said black had a deep emotional
effect as well.
“The colour black is changing the mood,” he said. “People are preparing for
more militant confrontations.”
AS MUCH as the millions of people on Tehran’s streets last week appeared to be
a revolution in the making, aimed at overthrowing the government, in reality
they had been allowed to continue because they were playing out a struggle
for the future of the Islamic Republic, not its overthrow.
Behind the unprecedented scenes in public, a vicious internecine political
battle was unfolding. Khamenei, who has almost unlimited power as supreme
leader, with control of the armed forces, media and foreign relations, has
abandoned the traditional role of the office, which is to remain above the
fray. He has openly taken the side of Ahmadinejad in wanting to retain the
unyielding regime of social restrictions and uncompromising international
policies.
On the other side, Mousavi is backed by Hashemi Rafsanjani, the wealthy former
president who is regarded as the second-most powerful man in Iran. He was
defeated by Ahmadinejad in 2005 in an election that was also clouded by
allegations of fraud, but heads the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body
that is responsible for supervising the supreme leader.
In many ways, Ahmadinejad and Mousavi are the face of the struggle between
Rafsanjani and Khamenei.
Rafsanjani’s antagonism towards Ahmadinejad was inflamed when the president
accused his two sons of corruption during a national television debate. He
funded Mousavi’s campaign from behind the scenes.
The support of Rafsanjani, whose reputation is of a wily, shrewd diplomat, for
Mousavi comes from a shared view of Iran’s future. Both believe that the
days of Iran’s unforgiving revolution are over and that the regime should
relax the strict Islamic rules on social behaviour and moderate foreign
policy to end Iran’s isolation in the world.
“Mousavi believes in evolution, not revolution,” said Sadegh Kharazi, a senior
Mousavi adviser.
He described Mousavi’s potential foreign policy. “Mousavi believes in reducing
the tension internationally and confidence-building that could result in a
normalisation of relations,” Kharazi said.
He spoke openly of the most sensitive areas in Iranian international policy,
relations with the United States and Iran’s nuclear programme. “If President
Obama understands Iran policy and Iran society, there is a good chance that
Mr Mousavi can make a bridge between the US and Iran.”
On the contentious nuclear issue, neither Mousavi nor Ahmadinejad would
survive politically if they abandoned Iran’s uranium enrichment programme,
which the West fears is aimed at manufacturing a nuclear bomb despite Iran’s
denials. Mousavi has, however, made clear he would be open to negotiations
to find a solution.
The reformist view of the world differs markedly from the one Khamenei made
clear in his Friday speech. Both he and Ahmadinejad have blamed the street
protests on “foreign intervention”.
“The aggressive powers of the western world showed their true faces finally,
and they are the faces of wolves,” said Khamenei.
“Not only in the United States, but in ‘dark-hearted’ England.” The hall
resounded with chants of “Death to America! Death to England! Death to
Israel!”
Khamenei also made no secret of whom he supported on Friday. Praising
Rafsanjani for his role in the Islamic revolution, he concluded: “There have
been differences of opinion between Mr Ahmadinejad and Mr Hashemi about
issues related to foreign policy, the nuclear issue and some cultural
issues. This is natural, but I personally approve Mr Ahmadinejad’s decisions
more.”
By putting himself so firmly behind Ahmadinejad, Khamenei is taking a gamble.
Pitting the authority of the state against the marchers, rather than
acknowledging their complaints, forces them to make a stand on the authority
of the revolutionary government. This could have dangerous consequences for
the regime, something that not even Rafsanjani and Mousavi would happily
countenance.
YESTERDAY’S bloodshed will polarise the situation.
One of the placards at a demonstration by Basiji and Ahmadinejad supporters
after prayers on Friday read: “O leader, point the direction and we will run
that way,” suggesting they will do whatever the authorities tell them to do.
There are questions, however, about whether the Revolutionary Guard, who were
not involved in yesterday’s shootings but are waiting in the wings, would
fire on the protesters. They are charged with defending the revolution, not
the supreme leader, and some guards are loyal to Rafsanjani.
“I will not be able to fire on these people,” said a young off-duty
Revolutionary Guard as he watched a march pass by last week. “Maybe some of
us will, but I won’t.”
The simple fact of yesterday’s demonstrations was remarkable. The protesters
had directly disobeyed the supreme leader – which just last week would
have been an unthinkable act.
Mousavi himself yesterday further upped the ante, saying that he was “ready
for martyrdom”. In a letter to the country’s legislative body he insisted
that the election result be annulled, claiming that it that been “rigged”
months in advance. He also called for a national strike if he were to be
arrested.
“We will only accept new elections,” a senior adviser to Mousavi said. “Our
representatives are the people on the street.
“Mousavi himself has told me he has had a good life and it is coming to an
end. He is willing to fight to the death for justice in this election.
“What you see today is like a medieval confrontation. We are witnessing what
happened in Europe with the emergence of John Calvin versus the Catholic
church. At the moment his supporters believe he can continue the
reformation.”
How strong their faith will be in the face of a crackdown by the regime will
become apparent in the coming days and weeks.
Why Britain is ‘the most evil’
When Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described Britain as “the most evil” of the
foreign powers meddling in Iran’s affairs, he was attacking a familiar
bogeyman for his audience.
Britain has an imperial history of exploiting Iranian oil resources and,
latterly, intervening in its affairs. In 1941 it invaded Iran and exiled the
Shah, who was suspected of pro-German sympathies. In 1953 Britain helped to
overthrow the nationalist prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh.
More recent tensions have resulted from Britain’s championing of the author
Salman Rushdie after he was sentenced to death in a fatwah issued by
Ayatollah Khomeini. The role of the BBC’s popular Persian service has also
attracted the ire of the regime.
Voices from the virtual crowd
The speech by Ayatollah Ali Khameini, Iran’s supreme leader, on Friday
provoked an outpouring of outrage from Iranians on the internet, mixed with
advice on how to demonstrate yesterday
“Shouting Allahu Akbar [God is great] from the rooftops has become even more
important. Call your relatives who live near the leader’s house to shout it
even louder tonight” - Ebrahimraha, blog
“Mr Khameini [right], how is it that some activities were revolutionary in
1979 and the BBC was good; now the same activies are blind riots and the BBC
is bad?” - Siavash, Twitter
“If Mousavi is responsible for killings on Saturday, then Khomeini was
responsbile for killings in 79, not the Shah” - Snowman, Twitter
“You [Khameini] have access to media, police, plain-clothed and ... you are
the only person responsible for what happens” - Harfehesaaby, blog
“Make sure you are walking with people you trust and know. Don’t stop at all.
When the regime’s forces attack, stay together and go towards them - they
will retreat instead” - Omid57, blog, advises people how to
demonstrate
“Khomeini: with the support of the people I will slap this regime in the
mouth. Khameini: with the support of this regime I will slap the people in
their mouth” - Arash, Facebook, referring to Ayatollah Khomeini’s
remark when returning from exile in Paris in 1979
“Tomorrow [Saturday] I will be in front of demo. Either I will die or get my
vote back” - Blondi, blog
“I am listening to all my favourite pop songs. Before the rally I will go to
the beauty salon to get my eyebrows plucked ... It may get violent. I might
be one of those who gets killed ... I am writing so the next generation do
not think we were sentimental and didn’t know what we are doing” - Hanna,
blog
