"I would tell Iranians to learn from the Egyptians, as we have learned from you guys, that at the end of the day with the power of people, we can do  whatever we want to do.  If we unite our goals, if we believe, then all our dreams can come true."
-- Wael Ghonim, in an interview with the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.
Many who have followed Iran's opposition looked at January 25 with a great deal of anxiety. The youth of Egypt were calling for a "Day of Anger," a singular protest event at a predestined location at a preset time. Iran's youth had taken a similar approach, many times, and with each protest the regime became better and better at anticipating the movements of the protesters, meeting them with arrests, tear gas, and riot police. I had been following the growing dissent in Egypt for quite some time, and I was both excited and afraid of what might happen on January 25.
On February 11th, 2010 (22 Bahman in the Persian Calendar), the Iranian regime planned its celebration of the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The opposition saw this day as an ultimate symbol, and they aimed to make it their own revolution by staging huge protests. With the foreign press confined to the pro-regime rally, I covered the protests live from halfway across the world, and watched in horror as the protests were broken up before they even began. There would be no successful second revolution on that day.
One year later, however, on February 11th, 2011, 22 Bahman, the Egyptian protesters celebrated their own revolution as President Mubarak stepped down. Egypt's opposition movement upstaged the Iranian regime's celebrations, and February 11 will now be known as the birth of a new Egypt. The world now uses January 25 as a rallying cry for democratic change, and #Jan25 is still a popular tag on Twitter for those following the wave of unrest in the Middle East. The dream a group of unarmed, leaderless people could bring about change through peaceful protest, despite the regime's arrests, beatings and murders, was alive once again.
Egypt has changed almost everything. Last week, the reformist opposition leaders in Iran, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, requested permission to hold a rally in solidarity with the Egyptian people, to be held tomorrow, Monday, February 14th, Valentines Day, 25 Bahman.
The regime has made it perfectly clear that they do not want this to happen. The requests for the rallies were denied. Mehdi Karroubi was placed under house arrest, and his phone lines have been cut. Rasoul Montajabnia, a deputy in Karroubi's party, has been assaulted while praying in a mosque in Tehran. The Iranian security forces have arrested at least 14 activists and journalists in the last week. The regime has also increased its filtering of the internet, blocking anything with the word "Bahman," as well as various social netwroking sites. Satellite signals are jammed in an attempt to block BBC Persian and other foreign news. According to sources on the ground, the internet is being slowed and is periodically shut off. Yesterday, most Iranian internet users could not use the net at all for several hours in the middle of the day. The Iranian government seems to be working very hard to stop tomorrow's protests from becoming the next January 25.
They are failing. Videos have begun to emerge of protest chants from the rooftops and in the universities. Dozens of student and faculty organizations, from cities all over Iran, have pledged their support of Monday's marches. The spokesperson of Mehdi Karroubi's Etemade Melli Party has released a statement that they do not need a permit to hold a rally. Sources of information that went quiet over a year ago, out of fear, are once again sending emails, phone calls, and are logging on to social media platforms. The message is clear:
The Iranian people, inspired by Egypt, are once again taking to the streets. Be ready to hear their voices.
No one expects the Iranian regime to be intimidated or to fall easily. Iran is not Egypt, and it is certainly not Tunisia. Ahmadinejad's Iran is a highly militarized society. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) and  the plain-clothed police force (Basij) will, no doubt, not hesitate to beat, arrest, or slaughter anyone they feel is a threat, just as they have in the past. There are already reports that some in the regime fear that some in the IRGC may not follow orders if asked to use force, but it is highly unlikely that security forces in Iran will fail to follow the orders of their President, or of their Supreme Leader. The Iranian regime has been fighting the opposition movement for almost two years, and their ability to control the internet, and the streets, is unrivaled. But so far, they have failed to stomp out the opposition, or the protests, and the discontent with the Iranian government may be below ground, but it is far from suppressed.
Many in the movement are tired, but it is undeniable that Egypt has given Iranians the boost that they need. According to sources on the ground, there is a tangible buzz, an excitement in the air that hasn't been felt by the movement in Iran in over a year. Even without this, hundreds and thousands of Iranians have been protesting, leaderless and without the cameras of CNN or Al Jazeera to watch their back. Now, there is a chance that the Green Movement will be rekindled, that many more will take to the streets in protest.
Will it be enough? Will 25 Bahman become Iran's January 25? In less than 24 hours, the Iranians will begin to answer that question.
James Miller will be covering the protests in Iran for Dissected News and Enduring America starting at 06:00 GMT. Get involved! Follow this simple guideline: Iran 101 - Post #Iranelection
Follow James Miller on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dissectednews
Yes, 'protests' happened, by a small fringe group that is adamant that the election was rigged despite the lack of any credible (at least, credible to someone who knows what the voting and vote counting process of an Iranian election is) theory, let alone any shred of evidence that amounts to more than the 'evidence' of a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, as to how it was done.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/16/iran-protester-death-hijacked
The Iranian regime has been accused of hijacking the death of a young pro-democracy protester killed during rallies in Tehran on Monday.
A family member of Saane Zhaleh, a 26-year-old theatre student at Tehran University of Arts, told the Guardian that the Iranian authorities had launched a campaign to depict the pro-opposition protester as a member of the government-sponsored basiji militia who had been killed by what they described as terrorists.
"They [security forces] have killed him and now they want to hijack his dead body and exploit his funeral for their own purposes. His family is totally devastated and inundated in sorrow," said the family member, who asked not to be identified...
Iran's semi-official FARS news agency published a basiji identity card that it said belonged to Zhaleh, but the opposition immediately questioned its authenticity. In response, activists sympathetic to the green movement published a photo of Zhaleh on social networking websites that showed him in a meeting with grand Ayatollah Montazeri, a leading opposition figure who died in 2009.
Authorities staged a funeral at the Tehran University of Arts but did not permit Zhaleh's family to attend...
With that out of the way, the notion that the CIA is involved in manipulating the Green Movement is laughable as well on so many levels. First of all, most of the Green Movement contacts I have contact with want a nuclear program, you know that thing that conspiracy theorists say is the heart of the CIA/Israel backed dissent in Iran? They're distrustful of the USA and want to be respected as a sovereign nation.
Secondly, if the Green Movement was backed by the CIA, they would have a more reliable internet connection and I would have a better computer and the ability to type.
Note to everyone: this was posted by Miller to dissociate the Greens from MEK, because of the latter's terrible record of killing people, while forces are working behind the scenes to take MEK out of the terrorist list. Notice he said "I refrain from taking a postion," in case they get off the list.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRwUZ-u6KFo
Yes, there were protests in Iran ~~ small ones. Most were infiltrated by MEK, as a result 1 bystander was shot and killed by a protester where there was no police, one student who was a volunteer for basij was brutally beaten and killed and 8 policemen were shot and injured (a crime unknown in Iran, except by MEK during early 80's).
United states needs to open up its eyes and see what is going on in the region, instead of living in a make belief world. The upheavals are in countries with no political freedoms and allies of the United States, with economically corrupt leaders, and population who can't buy food or people who are fed up to be a subservient to US demands for Israel's security. One of the countries to watch after Bahrain and Yemen, is Azerbaijan . The discontent there is considerable and at a tipping point. The government as usual blames "Iranian agents", but protests are being planned. A young blogger who was planning demonstrations was arrested recently. I give that dynastic regime no more than 2 months.
The good news is that it seems I was correct. The Iranian people were inspired enough to pour into the streets and protest. Estimates of the total number of protesters in the streets on Monday are hard to come by, but they range between 50,000 and 350,000 (I'm working on narrowing this range as we speak, so stay tuned). There were protests all across Iran, and many on Tuesday as well.
I'll have a more detailed analysis soon. Thanks, as always, for reading.
80% of them approve of the job Ahmadinejad is doing.
Support for the Iranian nuclear program is so overwhelming that even the opposition candidates included fully supporting it in their campaign platforms.
The majority also supports supporting Hamas.
If the comment is aimed at Barack Obama, you're completely on point. Obama has, in my opinion, said many of the right things about changing America's foreign policy direction. Has he done any of them? Not much. It's important to remember that these things don't turn on a dime, nor should they, but this administration has been slow to accomplish the changes they they promised during the campaign, or even in speeches like Egypt.
The U.S. definitely has a hypocrisy problem. Some of us are working hard to change that.