Iran after the elections: 9 July (18 Tir) - part 2

Hi - if you're here due to a Twitter update, check the bottom of the post.

It turns out that the protests have taken place this time, and places like CNN are right on top of it, reporting 2000 to 3000 people heading towards Tehran University.

A tweet in Persian just now says that "just now more than 400 people are in front of Tehran University and have begun shouting slogans like Allaho Akbar and death to the dictator (marg bar diktator)".

A lot of other tweets in Persian are saying that there are some 500 Basij on motorcycles and that they are taking pictures of protesters in order to identify them later.

A video has just gone up from today:



A poster below the video says that the chants they are using are new and specific to today and thus prove the date: "ei dolate koodeta, estefa estefa" (ای دولت کودتا، استعفا، استعفا) means "coup government, resign resign". That part comes at the very end. You can also hear them calling out "death to the dictator" and "death to Khamenei" before that.

Many more videos are coming in as we speak and they're great to see. Here's another recent one. Note how many people are covering their faces this time.



Here's another image that has been uploaded from Amirabad Street.



My sense is that today's protests started out relatively small due to fear of a quick crackdown, and then suddenly spread as people began to hear that numbers on the streets were growing. A lot of people on Twitter are talking about more and more people leaving their homes to join with the others.

Another video from today is from Kargar Shomali Street (خيابان كارگر شمال) - Shomali means north.



You can see the location of the street in the map here - it goes from north to south. Going just a bit to the west you can see Azadi Square (the circular-looking thing just northeast of the airport), so it's quite close.


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One quick note - an article here shows something I wrote about here a bit over a week after the election when the crackdown first started, regarding the erosion of national morale for those on Ahmadinejad and Khamenui's side. People simply don't like to think of themselves as supporting evil, and the less legitimate the government is in the eyes of the people the more those that know secrets about the government will be willing to release them to effect change. Because Khamanei and Ahmadinejad have not made any concessions whatsoever, they are now up against not just reformists within the country but also the image of a better country, and that image is nearly impossible to fight against.

Here's a video that was just uploaded.



As for what the chant is: "Irani ba gheiret, hemayet, hemayet" (ایرانی با غیرت حمایت حمایت) which means "Iranian with fervor, support, support". That is, support for those that are fervently struggling for freedom.

CNN has a video on the protests today here.



Two more videos from today: