The end is nigh for the Iranian regime. The pro-democracy Green Movement has shown itself to be equal to the Islamist regime’s use of extreme force, mass arrests, show trials, torture and rape in prisons with its ever-growing, relentless and peaceful campaign of civil disobedience.
Meanwhile the Baseej are defecting in numbers as shown in this video:
And in this picture:
Baseej Defector
The Green Movement is approaching a critical mass which presents a greater counter force than the government can possibly bear. Nor did the regime help itself by making a martyr of the nephew of the leading opposition leader. Juan Cole sees this adding insult to injury and more trouble ahead for the administration:
For the regime to create a member of the Mousavi family as a martyr on Ashura was most unwise. Shiite Islam even more than traditional Catholicism thrives on the blood of martyrs. [...] Junior or middle-ranking Ayatollahs favorable to the ideas of Montazeri show up in a number of these reports about protests in provincial cities, suggesting a generational split in the clerical corps and trouble for Khamenei ahead.
The term “Yazid” is now applied to the government and its security forces, in reference to the corrupt tyrannical caliph; a term loaded with historical, religious and revolutionary connotations. Potkin discusses moment in which government riot guard, cornered by the people, begs for forgiveness:
People have cornered these security forces. People ask them ‘why do you do this to your people?’ and the riot guards ask for forgiveness, ‘Bebakhshid’ they can be heard to say.
‘You are Yazid’s – the Khalif against whom the Ashura uprising took place -forces’, the woman shouts at them. One of the protesters then reassures them that they will not be beaten up, all they have to do is say Khameneii is a bastard. The woman can then be heard saying ‘All you can do is kill your people is it?’ and again they plead saying ‘Please We are not killers’.
The sooner they join the people, the sooner they will redeem themselves with the people of Iran.
It is time to start wondering out aloud when the Iranian people will topple this “Yazdi” regime because it can’t be long now.
8 Comments
Truly awesome.
…it would be great, but methinks you are a bit too optimistic
On the contrary, I think I’m playing it down.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6969094.ece
Some very interesting and in-depth reportage and pictures over on the Tehran Bureau website. This report stands out:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2009/12/religious-holiday-turns-bloody.html
Can any Farsi speakers translate the chant in the first video? Something Something ‘eestador’?
Yes, playing it down relative to the analysis of another overly optimistic commentator. Not playing it down in terms of the actual likelihood that this is a ‘tipping point’
And that likelihood of that “tipping point” is ever increasing to the extent that I am playing it down as in understating how the very nature of mass movements have the potential of growing exponentially in influence and could, in the blink of an eye, topple anything.
The old adage comes to mind:
Revolutionary situations emerge when the rulers can no longer rule in the same old ways and the ruled are no longer willing to be ruled in the same old ways.