Posted at Informed Comment: Today, under slate skies and despite official warnings that the permit to march had been denied, they came. They came by the tens if not hundreds of thousands, marching east to west to Azadi, or Freedom Square...
That they came to Azadi, a place where thirty years ago the Revolution pivoted toward victory, was fitting... It is as if whomever can get to the important places and rituals first and stay there, hang onto them, will win....
In the crowd there are families, young and old. One cannot help but notice the large presence of women of all ages. The typical daily life of the capital is out here together...
As I have noted before, what is remarkable about the Mousavi and opposition marches is the orderly disorder... There are no official Mousavi volunteers guiding the crowd to designated rallying points... The movement is self-directed. Mousavi had asked his supporters to march but to march peacefully, to not give any excuse for violence. The crowd is abiding... It is quiet...
Everybody says that in a few days the protests will be stopped, what's the point of going out, but when the moment comes everyone is here. To stop this now would take a tremendous display of violence and thus far, blessedly, that has not happened... It is like a dream. We wake up in the morning, our legs and voices sore, wondering if this is really happening, anxious for what will come next.
Robert Fisk, The Independent: 'Please, please, keep the Basiji from us,' one middle-aged lady pleaded with a special forces officer in flak jacket and helmet as the Islamic Republic's thug-like militia appeared in their camouflage trousers and purity-white shirts only a few metres away. The cop smiled at her. 'With God's help,' he said. Two other policemen were lifted shoulder-high. 'Tashakor, Tashakor,' -- 'thank you, thank you' -- the crowd roared at them.
This was phenomenal. The armed special forces of the Islamic Republic, hitherto always allies of the Basiji, were prepared for once, it seemed, to protect all Iranians, not just Ahmadinejad's henchmen. The precedent for this sudden neutrality is known to everyone -- it was when the Shah's army refused to fire on the millions of demonstrators demanding his overthrow in 1979... If the Iranian security forces are now taking the middle ground, then Ahmadinejad is truly in trouble.
Paul Woodward, War in Context: By once again rallying his supporters both in defiance of the government and in the name of mourning those who have been killed, Mousavi is rekindling the spirit of the 1979 revolution. Through 1978, demonstrations following a 40-day mourning cycle -- each time mourners gathered, more would be killed -- became the engine of the revolution...
At this point, it appears that the rubicon has been crossed -- Iran is in a revolutionary situation... Although this might not be revolution in a traditional sense, since it follows no ideological blueprint and lacks a revolutionary leadership, if events continue along their current trajectory (which at this point bears every mark of being unstoppable) then the reformists will find themselves accidental revolutionaries.
Roger Cohen, The New York Times: Yassamin, a documentary movie maker, turned away. 'We need a Gandhi,' she said to me. 'We need Moussavi to risk his life and stand there.'...
I received this note from an Iranian-American with family here: 'The bottom line right now is whose violence threshold is higher? How much are the hard-liners willing to inflict to suppress the population and tell yet another generation to shut up? And how much are Moussavi and his supporters willing to stand to fulfill their dreams? It sounds so inhuman, but that's what it comes down to. It's very scary.'
Many women are trying quietly to bridge the chasm and avoid the worst. I've heard them whispering to the Basij and the police that 'We are all Iranians,' urging them to hold back. They reming me of those who placed flowers in the barrels of soldiers' guns during the 1979 revolution...
As dusk somes, people gather on the roofs of their apartment buildings and the haunting sound of 'Allah-u-Akbar' -- God is great... echoes across the megalopolis. The Iranian yearning in those cries is immense.
