Iranian ex-diplomat in Norway: alleged attack on Ahmadinejad was a PR stunt

Here's an article in Norway's NRK today quoting Mohammad Reza Heydari (محمد رضا حیدری), the former Iranian diplomat (most recently consul in the Iranian Embassy in Oslo) who believes that the news of attacks on Ahmadinejad two days ago were staged. This is on the front of NRK right now but is not in any other language, and Balatarin (Persian Reddit/Digg) doesn't even have it yet so Norwegian only for the moment. Some of the article:

Mohammad Reza Heydari worked as a diplomat for the Iranian regime for 20 years. He believes the attempted attack on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was staged by the regime itself.

– Ahmadinejad wants to create publicity around himself, and yesterday he succeeded in doing just that, said the ex-diplomat Mohammad Reza Heydari to NRK.

Heydari worked as a diplomat for the Islamic Republic for 20 years, most recently as Consul at the Iranian Embassy in Oslo. Earlier in the year he resigned in protest against the clerical regime's handling of protesters during and after the presidential election in the summer of last year.

Yesterday it was announced that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his entourage was attacked with a hand grenade in the city of Hamadan, a ways (360 km) outside of the capital Tehran.

A source at the president's office confirmed the attack, but said that Ahmadinejad was unhurt. One man was arrestet for the assault.

Less than an hour later came a new message from Iranian state media:
There was no attack, and the alleged explosion was due to fireworks fired to celebrate the president's presence.

According to the ex-consul there is an apparatus around the Iranian president that periodically creates rumours intended to attract international attention to him. There could be many reasons for this, according to Heydari:

– On one hand they want Ahmadinejad to be visibly internationally, and yesterday we saw just that happen, said Heydari pointing out that the news reached the western media within minutes:

– Parts of the speech he held right after the alleged attack were broadcast in many TV stations and sites over the world. Millions of people were able to see and hear Ahmadinejad's criticism that there are still American soldiers in Iraq.  

No explosion

The ex-diplomat believes that rumours of attacks and other threats against the president can also have another function for the regime:

Eks-diplomaten mener rykter om attentat og andre trusler mot presidenten også kan ha en annen funksjon for regimet:

– By having the Iranian people believe that such an incident has taken place, the regime creates an impression that there is a general threat to security in the country. With that the clerical regime more easily legitimize its oppression of protests, and the fact that more and more are being held as political prisoners in jails, believes Heydari.
 
He noted that the explosion, which first was said to be a hand grenade and then to be fireworks, could not be seen or heard in any images from the event.

Also: NRK has not been able to get a comment from the Iranian embassy in Oslo.

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Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the presidential election in Iran

Tomorrow is the 12th of June (22 Khordâd / خرداد), thus a full year since the presidential election last year that led to so many protests and so much attention online. Though Persian isn't my main focus I always make sure to spend a bit of time with the language every day, and that usually means reading and listening to BBC Persian or a Mohsen Sazegara video as he has continued to release them daily. Today's video:



The date is also significant in that a new round of sanctions has passed the UN Security Council, including the support of Russia and China. The Obama administration has been especially impressive on the diplomatic front with these two countries, and the warming relations between the US and Russia has been especially aggravating for Ahmadinejad who has recently been somewhat bitter towards Russia for delayed nuclear power plants, missile shipments, etc.

On the other hand, it's still sad that the vast majority of news about Iran has been about the nuclear issue and little else. After a certain amount of more varied coverage after the elections things have settled down to the previous norm, and the debate one sees on sites like Reddit has also become quite simplistic, with false dichotomies involving the following two sides:

Side 1 (the bad guys): the US as a whole (or neoconservatism), Israel, US allies, oil interests, etc.
Side 2 (the good guys by default): Palestine, Israel, Turkey, etc. etc.

For a period of a few months after the election though there was a bit more depth to the comments on Iran, where many realized that you really don't have to choose between multinational oil companies and Ahmadinejad, or Netanyahu and Hamas. So the continued coverage on the nuclear issue alone has sadly brought dumbed down the coverage on Iran.

As for the sanctions themselves, NIAC is opposed to them as they thought the fuel swap deal was a good thing. They were in favour of limited sanctions that did nothing to harm average citizens in Iran, but not the new sanctions.

As for protests today, that's anyone's guess. There are a lot of plans but the last large planned demonstrations were vastly outnumbered by security and it's impossible to say what will happen until the day arrives. One thing is for sure though: while the Iranian government is capable of suppressing demonstrations there will eventually be another presidential election (in three years, plus legislative elections a year before that of course) and if the status quo continues until then turnout will certainly be extremely low as voters will be in no mood to be used again to claim that the incumbent has been elected with a landslide.

Anyway, keep an eye on Iran-related news tomorrow. In the meantime read this piece featuring an interview with Shirin Ebadi.

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Iranian government not happy with the idea of Persian Euronews

Quelle surprise! The Iranian government is not a fan of the idea of another news channel in Persian run from outside the country. An article here in Turkish has the details:

Iran said it would not give permission for Euronews to work within the country "if it were to be like other foreign Persian channels".

The idea of Euronews working within Iran, which recently began broadcasting in Turkish, is not being looked at favorably by the Iranian government. The Iranian Minister of Culture and Guidance Sayid Mohammad Huseini said that they would not give permission for the Euronews television channel to set up a bureau within the country for its Persian-language section "if it were to be like all the other foreign Persian channels that broadcast to Iran". Huseini, accusing foreign Persian channels of not being objective, said that "apparently these channels want to provide information and broadcast films, but their real objective is something else. They are set up to affect public opinion and impose their own ideas".

Huseini also mentioned the events that took place last year after the presidential elections in Iran, saying that they saw how these channels worked as 'command and brain rooms' (can't think of a good term for this but means a kind of political war room or propaganda centre) and carried out provocation, and that "of course we would not give them permission to set up a bureau if they were to carry out these kinds of broadcast politics."

Iran has not given permission to Radio Farda, BBC and VOA's Persian language channels to operate within Iran on the grounds of interference with internal affairs. Most centres for these Persian television and radio channels, about fifty in total, operate within the United States and Europe.

The day Euronews in Persian is set up will also be a great day for students of the language, as their videos more often than not agree with the text below, making it easy to both read and hear the news at the same time. The last post here on Euronews in Persian was in January, here, where the channel was said to be planning to start broadcasting in Persian near the end of 2010. The Turkish-language version was also a bit vague about the exact start date right up until just ten days before it began (though it did specify before then that it would be in January), so it's not likely we'll know an exact date ahead of time for Persian either.

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Should the Iranian government be worried about the government overthrow in Kyrgyzstan?

That didn't take long. The anti-government protests in Kyrgyzstan only took slightly over a day to overthrow the government and the president has fled the country. And less than a year after the last election with its confident "Bakiyev of course" campaign. Here's a quick video from Russia Today with some background.



Doing a search on Twitter now for #Iranelection + Kyrgyzstan shows that many are already drawing parallels between Kyrgyzstan and Iran, and that Kyrgyzstan is "showing Iran how it's done" in overthrowing a repressive government. So is drawing parallels warranted? Here are some arguments for both sides.

The Iranian government doesn't need to be worried about Kyrgyzstan: Kyrgyzstan isn't located next to Iran (you have to cross two other countries in order to get there and the total distance between the two capitals is greater than 2000 km), and the two governments were never particularly close; Kyrgyzstan is next to China, is not an energy producer, and its main geopolitical value to its larger neighbors lies in being a host to bases from the US and Russia. Also, Kyrgyzstan speaks Kyrgyz, a Turkic language. Iran has much closer ties with Tajikistan, a country that speaks Persian (though written in the Cyrillic script), so a government overthrow in Tajikistan would have been a much bigger deal.


View Tehran to Bishkek in a larger map

The Iranian government does need to be worried about Kyrgyzstan: In spite of the above, the idea of a new government in a nearby country formed by protests more than half a year after a disputed election in the summer of 2009 does seem eerily similar, and if a new government is quickly set up that the rest of the world deems legitimate, Iran would effectively either have to deal with a government set up in more or less the same way many in its own opposition wanted to see carried out, or take a stand on its own that such governments are not to be recognized and be the odd man out. It's safe to say that given the option of the status quo until yesterday and a new government in Kyrgyzstan, the Iranian government would prefer the former. The safest route for the Iranian government would probably be the bland course - issue a few statements about being concerned about violence, then establish official relations with the new country but without any high-key statements, say that it's a Kyrgyz internal issue and Iran doesn't get involved with the internal affairs of other countries if questioned.

The Iranian government has already issued a statement which seems to be along these lines. Note though that apparently the interior minister has not been killed.

What will also be important will be how free and democratic the new government in Kyrgyzstan happens to be. If political freedom there is improved and Kyrgyzstan clearly looks better off after the previous government's overthrow then it will continue to be an example of dictatorship to democracy (a book that has been translated into Persian and is often read by opposition supporters) over the coming years; if not, then it will serve merely as an example that the new boss is often the same as the old one.

It will be interesting to see what Mohsen Sazegara says about the situation over the next few days in his daily video updates, and I'll keep an eye on anything that deserves to be mentioned there.

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22 Bahman 1388 (11 February 2010) protests in Iran

Today's long-awaited protests have begun in Iran and sites such as Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Lede and Tehran Bureau are keeping track of events, and I'll add information here whenever I find anything useful and/or in Persian and not yet translated into English.

If you're here from a Twitter update, check the bottom of the post.




This is no surprise - foreign press is banned from covering anything but Ahmadinejad's speech. Associated Press says that they haven't been given permission to cover the streets of Tehran. As always though all you have to do is do a search by date for تهران (Tehran) on YouTube to see what's going on. Here's a recent video:



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Here's a tweet from a minute ago about Mashhad today:

"Widespread crackdown in Mashhad. The city has been completely turned into a garrison. People are protesting in Mashhad as well."

Apparently 100 people have been arrested there.


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If you're a Reddit user, here are three (1, 2, 3) recent threads to vote up and/or comment on.


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Here's a video taken from next to the government rally in Azadi square earlier, showing a military helicopter taking off as well. That rally comes off as rather stale, with even some balloons seen at 0:48.




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There are quite a few videos of Khamenei posters being torn and trampled today. Here are two of them:






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Oh, Press TV. You make Fox News look like a bastion of journalistic integrity.

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Greek journalist Iason Athanasiadis on the shifting political winds in Iran

An op-ed written by him today in the Los Angeles Times can be read here. The name Athanasiadis might ring a bell to some - he was one of the journalists taken off to Evin Prison during the first few weeks of post-election unrest, and his capture at the airport was also noteworthy as he was dragged off screaming at the time in order to let as many people know as possible who he was.

The term "party of the wind" in the article is hezb-e-bâd in Persian (حزب باد).

A short time after his release from Evin Prison he gave an interview that you can see below.

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Larijani's search for the real killer

Looks like Larijani already knows who was behind the killing of the scientist Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a hard-line regime supporter who...wait a second, make that a Mousavi supporter.

There is generally a process that a country goes through when it is generally surprised at an event like this. Step one is to issue a general condemnation, along with a call for national unity, and patience. After that the event dominates the news for the next few days after which an investigation takes place, and a few days later they will generally have an idea about who was responsible. Here though Larijani and others have already said they know exactly who is responsible for (the US and Israel) a single day after the event and are already taking potshots at Obama.

More background on the professor here, and Andrew Sullivan's view here.

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Quote of the day: propaganda from the Iranian government on Neda Agha Soltan's death

Quote of the day:

Somewhere in hell Goebbels is face palming.

Context here.

Just in case you're not sure what a facepalm is, it's a term coined thanks to Captain Jean-Luc Picard whenever he would famously cover his face with his palm due to frustration. Here's one, the video gives another.



So what type of propaganda is so obvious as to provoke such a reaction? This one. The Iranian government has decided to try another tactic, creating a video claiming that Neda first took a bottle hid in her left hand, lay down and spread blood over her face, after which she was taken away by the men around her where she was then shot in the back by them.

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More clarification on what role Twitter does and does not play in the election aftermath in Iran

Here's a post from ten days ago I wrote in response to an article I considered to be a pretty lazy analysis of the situation in Iran, an article that claimed that users on Twitter are not only overly smug but also harmful to the green movement in Iran. The main point in my response was that since the election Twitter hasn't been a tool to organize protests in Iran but rather simply to broadcast them. Since the election tactics have become very low tech, using methods such as writing on bills to protest and spraying paint on walls to advertise the dates of upcoming major events.

That article also attracted the ire of Niteowl, who wrote a response that then attracted the attention of the original writer (Will Heaven), and there was a bit of back and forth in the comments section there. A day later Will Heaven wrote a blog post here clarifying his position on the role of Twitter, under which I added a comment yesterday. Almost 24 hours later it's still in the queue and no other comments have been approved, so I might as well repost mine here. Here it is:

> It seems difficult to deny that these sorts of messages – mainly posted by Iranian-Americans – incite those inside Iran to commit very dangerous acts.

I'd say it's actually quite easy to deny, for two simple reasons: 1) Iranians on the street don't need Twitter to learn how to defend themselves against Basijis on bikes, tear gas and whatnot. Since the election tactics within the country have become very low tech and the internet is more about broadcasting what is already happening than planning. 2) The advice is in English. Switch to Persian and you will find usable information from people that are actually from Iran and thus beyond criticism (they have friends and family within the country and thus aren't just telling people what to do from a safe confine). Mohsen Sazegara's daily videos for example.

I get the gist of this article but there really isn't much that can be done from outside, besides simply following events and broadcasting (including retweeting) what is going on, and outsiders really aren't capable of provoking Iranians a great deal either way through tweets alone.

As for Ahmadinejad remaining in power - thus far it has been seven months since the election, and the Shah was still in power seven months after the first protests began (the entire revolution took a bit over a year) so it's too early to tell. Iran will resolve this eventually one way or another and Twitter will only be a footnote in the story.

Ah, one more point to make:

>If the regime was able to match information posted by someone in Iran with similar information being passed around in the US, does Shahryar think they would be forgiven?

I also disagree with this point as those that are doing the capturing and interrogation of political prisoners are not rational in the first place, and one never knows what will be used to implicate someone. The so-called "Mr. Rosewater" kept on interrogating him about his supposed connections to New Jersey of all places, and footage of him on the Daily Show was also used to try to paint him as a spy. But without the Daily Show footage they surely would have come up with something just as ludicrous and unexpected, and it isn't our job (nor is it even possible) to try to appeal to their sense of what is normal or not. If they have a case they want to make they'll make it, using anything they feel they need to make it whether high tech or low. Regular Iranians won't be spared as a result of less prolific Twitter activity.

Edit one day later: looks like the comment has been approved.

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Iran's green movement is a civil rights movement, and other links

Here are a few links from the past few days to share.

The most interesting one is probably this article from Foreign Policy, by Hooman Majd or the author of The Ayatollah Begs to Differ. Not just your average Iranian foreign policy wonk, Majd was an adviser and interpreter for two Iranian presidents, both Khatami and Ahmadinejad. He notes correctly that the opposition is generally not interested in a total revolution (Iran already had one and we know how that worked out) but rather a reformation from within while remaining the Islamic Republic of Iran. Country names really aren't that important so I also don't see any reason for changing the name - for example the United States used to mean a country that condoned slavery and didn't give women the vote and now it doesn't, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is the Korea without democracy and with repression of its own people.

The next link is this one, on the attempt to defrock Ayatollah Sanei and the rifts that are being opened in the clerical establishment as a result of this. Related to the link above, even if the IRI kept the same name but Sanei became the Supreme Leader, it obtained an independent judiciary and free press and all the rest it would be a completely different country.

A link from CNN here is on the staged pro-government rallies after Ashura and why they fool nobody.

The Iranian consul in Norway also resigned two days ago. You can read the news in Persian here as well, and here is a video in Norwegian on the resignation too.



Finally we have LA Times on the opposition manifesto, detailing their exact demands: "resignation of the current leadership, introduction of broad democratic freedoms, prosecution of security forces engaged in violence against the opposition and an end to politics in the military, universities and the clergy."

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88 Tehran University professors risk their livelihood in signed letter to Khamenei

That was arguably yesterday's biggest event in Iran, with 88 professors from Tehran University signing a letter to Khamenei denouncing the violent crackdown on protesters within university grounds. The university has a total of 1480 professors and teachers, but remember that these 88 are pretty much doing so on the assumption that they will be fired and/or detained for doing this, so it's not simply just laying pen to paper as one might do on a petition in another country.

The letter in Persian can be seen in full here.

The government announced about a week ago that as of January 8 it would no longer accept money that had writing on it as legal tender, and so in response to that the day before is now National Money Writing Day (روز ملی اسکناس نویسی). Every bill in sight gets written on it on National Money Writing Day.

The next expected round of clashes is written about today here in Time, including some speculation that the government is now attempting to use the same tactics China used after Tiananmen Square and whether they will be successful in that or not.

Ahmadinejad's web site also got hacked today, and doesn't seem to be in much of a hurry to change the text (it's already been almost a day since it happened). Just in case it finally changes here's a screen shot of what it says right now:

"Dear God, In 2009 you took my favorite singer - Michael Jackson, my favorite actress - Farrah Fawcett, my favorite actor - Patrick Swayze, my favorite voice - Neda. Please, please, don't forget my favorite politician - Ahmadinejad and my favorite dictator - Khamenei in the year 2010. Thank you."

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Iran post-election roundup, 4 January 2010

Quite a few links to share today.

First of all, the tricky issue of sanctions. The National Iranian-American Council seems to be very pleased with the idea of very targeted sanctions that work only against the government of Iran and the Revolutionary Guard, and not the citizens of Iran. The most important issue is summed up nicely in this one sentence by an administration official:

We have to be deft at this, because it matters how the Iranian people interpret their isolation -- whether they fault the regime or are fooled into thinking we are to blame.

It is a much better idea than the brainless and blunt sanctions Congress has been pushing for.

On a related note, the Iranian government has denied a visa to John Kerry's rumoured visit to Tehran. Note that nobody on Kerry's side either had ever confirmed the idea of visiting Tehran so it was nothing more than a rumour from the start, but it's still nice to see the idea of a visa quashed so early on as it's another sign of their hardheadedness and unwillingness to compromise on even the smallest of proposals.

The French foreign minister says that high-ranking clerics are undermining the government in Iran. The exact quote was "Nous voyons tous qu'il est menacé par des gens très déterminés, certains très religieux, par la hiérarchie chiite elle-même" and can be read en français here.

New York Times today on Iranian filmmakers and their continued focus on the current situation. The Iranian filmmaker most often mentioned when politics is brought up is Mohsen Mahkmalbaf, who works quite closely with Mohsen Sazegara and sometimes makes joint appearances like this one last month:

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Iranians chase away goon weilding a gun on Ashura

Here's another video that recently surfaced from the protests on Ashura:



You can read some context here.

Here's another video from the same day with protesters swarming a member of security on a bike.



See here and here for some commentary on Mousavi's latest statement. The most important part is probably this one:

"We have several times been told [by the establishment] that if you issue no statements, the people would not come to the streets, but neither me nor Mr Karroubi had issued any statement, but the people still came into the streets.

(Persian text of the statement is here and that part above is in the first paragraph after the opening)

Since the movement is not waiting for any orders from Mousavi, Karroubi or anybody else, any steps taken against them by the regime can do nothing but backfire. It's also why their political targets have been limited to less prominent people - not Mousavi but Mousavi's nephew, not Shirin Ebadi but her sister, etc. We've all seen what happens when something happens involving a much more prominent figure (i.e. the death of Ayatollah Montazeri).

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La Dow Jones ia gania 18.82% en la anio 2009, e protestas en Iran

Un proba peti de scrive en LFN sur la sujeto economial (de esta article en franses), ma como on dise stock market (bourse) en LFN? Borsa? Me ia es surprendeda vidente ce la disionario no ave un parola tan simple. Edita: el pare ce la parola per stock market es asioneria.

La borsa* de New York ia fini la anio sur un perde a jovedi, an cuando la plu de investores ia clui se contas, sin un efeto grande per la rebondi neta mostrada en 2009: la Dow Jones ia perde 1.19% durante la dia, ma ia gania 18.82% tra la anio.

La Dow Jones Industrial Average ia abandona 120.46 puntos per fini a 10 428.05 puntos.

La gania en 2009 es la gania anial la plu forte de pos 2003.

Un otra sujeto: me ia vide oji ce la paje sur la protestas en Iran en la Wikipedia en polsce es un paje elejeda (un paje ce pote apare en la paje prima), e es tre detalios. En fato, la istoria de Polsca es un inspira per persones en Iran e me ave un libro traduida en parsi sur la luta en Polsca per democratia, con la titulo Polsca: la potia de unia (Poland: the power of solidarity o لهستان: قدرت همبستگی).

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This week's laziest analysis on the situation in Iran

...can be read here. The article begins with the opening sentence "Smug Twitter activists are wrong to think they are liberating Iran", and goes downhill from there. First a quick demonstration on where the article's logic fails, and then a comment on the role Twitter is playing in the situation in Iran now.

First, we have a rushed conclusion right from the start:

So far it has been six and a half months since the elections in Iran, and thus far Ahmadinejad has managed to hold on to power. But we all know who else managed to hold on to power at the 6.5-month mark: the Shah. The first demonstrations against him began in January 1978, and six months later in July the strikes that paralyzed the economy had yet to happen. Consensus at the time was that the Shah had held on to power.

Skip down a bit in the article and we find this:

...the point here being that Twitter and other social media are more beneficial for the government than protesters. But if this was true, then governments of this nature would encourage their use. They would leave the internet unblocked, monitor online traffic and simply sweep in and scoop up their targets like fish caught in a treacherous net or birds trapped in a snare when the time for them to be arrested and detained falls upon them. But no, the government in Iran does whatever it can to prevent access to the internet whenever the day for a planned protest approaches.

Twitter serves a different function in a country like Iran than in a typical western democracy, which may be the misunderstanding upon which this op-ed was based. In a normal country it is easy enough to use Twitter or Facebook to arrange a meeting, whether political or not. In Iran though there is no benefit to protesters in using Twitter to arrange everything in the short term since it effectively broadcasts their plans to the world, and thus more low-tech methods have to be used. At the same time, however, Twitter is still useful for huge planned protests, those that take a week or two to plan and will have enough momentum of their own to fight against government thugs. And the other use for Twitter is also as a broadcasting tool: as a method of simply getting attention it's only as effective as any other method, and usually a link on a site like Reddit or Digg will attract much more traffic anyway. But Twitter's use in giving up to the minute information is unparalleled, and this use can be seen in live reactions to speeches or events, and general reporting on the ground as long as it comes from a trusted source and not simply a purveyor in rumours.

Oh, and Twitter is also very good at keeping the mainstream media in line. When the protests first happened after the election there was a huge storm on Twitter using the #CNNFail hashtag as at the time CNN was spending most of its time talking about switching to digital tv and other trivial information, while all the real information was to be found on Twitter, blogs and in Persian.

One more article to share today: here's what happens to the best pupils in Iran, especially those that are at all political.

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Radio Netherlands: Khamenei's jet has been checked in case he needs to flee the country

That's the story here from Radio Netherlands, which was then distributed to a wider audience both through Twitter and Huffington Post. Balaratin also has a link here, from which we can learn a little Persian at the same time.

One thing about Persian is that since it's written from right to left but the genitive and adjectives usually are formed in the opposite way they are in English (e.g. My friend's dog's house is house-of-dog-of-friend-of-I), when you write the English equivalent underneath it's often already intelligible. Coup failure for example is failure of coup, Khamenei's private jet is jet-of-private-of-Khamenei, and Huffington Post news agency is news agency of Huffington Post.

Huffington Post, by the way, has been a bit preachy and boring of late. Headlines such as Biden should resign, stop talking about Balloon Boy and talk about issues instead (while having link after link devoted to models slipping on the catwalk, somebody's fashion no-no or a nipple slip), and often some outright inaccurate headlines (Abu Dhabi refuses to bail out Dubai!! when the story it linked to was more along the lines of Abu Dhabi considering Dubai bailout method and amount).

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28 December 2009: Barack Obama's speech on protests in Iran in English and Persian

Barack Obama condemned the recent violence in Iran today, as can be seen in this video:



I've also broken the speech down sentence by sentence with its equivalent in Persian. The transcript in English can be seen here, and Persian here.

In the meantime, authorities in Iran are trying to prevent funerals of slain protesters from taking place by holding the bodies. *rolls eyes*

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How many cities did the protests yesterday (Ashura) take place in?

Answer: at least 21.

1. Tehran - تهران
2. Yazd - یزد
3. Hamedan - همدان
4. Sari - ساری
5. Rasht - رشت
6. Tabriz - تبریز
7. Ilam - ایلام
8. Esfahan - اصفهان
9. Ahvaz - اهواز
10. Ardabil - اردبیل
11. Arak - اراک
12. Urmia - ارومیه
13. Qazvin - قزوین
14. Qom - قم
15. Karaj - کرج
16. Kerman - کرمان
17. Kermanshah - کرمانشاه
18. Yasuj - یاسوج
19. Mashhad - مشهد
20. Bandar-Abbas - بندرعباس
21. Zanjan - زنجان

Further detail on which parts of these cities the protests took place in can be seen here, though you have to join the group to see its content, plus it's all written in Persian.

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27 December 2009 (6 Dey 1388): Ashura, and more protests in Iran

It's late here in Korea so I won't be able to sift through news in Persian to find anything that English media isn't covering, but here are some links to get started on what has happened today, one of the largest protests since June.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Lede

#Iranelection hashtag on Twitter

Basiji headquarters on fire:



National Iranian-American Council's blog

Here's another video of what happened when some basiji attempted to round up protesters and take them away in a van.

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Editorial in New York Times calling for airstrikes on Iran gets roundly trashed

I was thinking of doing the same myself, but the National Iranian-American Council and many others did such a good job that I don't need to anymore. Read here for their response and see the bottom of the post for a number of other responses to the tired and false dilemma that the only way to deal with "Iran" (i.e. the regime currently attempting to hang on to power and unable to stop the continuous protests from the people) is by using military airstrikes.

In other news, the central bank in Iran is planning to "invalidate" banknotes with graffiti on them by January 8th due to the large amount of bills with marg bar diktator and whatnot scribbled on them. Not sure how they plan to do this, since cash is used by individuals without the approval of a central bank, and usually banks simply destroy defaced bills and new bills are then printed in their place. Perhaps when there is direct interaction between a bank and an individual or business they could try to ignore the defaced notes, but besides this I don't see what the bank could do. Here's what a defaced bill looks like.

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