I have just made it back home from the intersection of Behboudi and Azadi Avenue. My throat is raw from tear gas, my eyes are still watering, and my ears are ringing with the metallic clatter of Special Forces riot police beating their batons against plastic shields in unison to intimidate the crowd. pbs
Ever since opposition websites reported yesterday that the regime had secretly transferred the four opposition figures to Heshmatiyeh Prison - prompting panicked judiciary officials to insist they were merely being held in total isolation inside their homes - Tehran has felt like a powder keg. The young people who walked into the tear gas on Enghelab and Azadi tonight did not risk their lives out of nostalgia for former regime officials. They came out because after the massive February 14 uprising, where MPs inside Parliament literally screamed for Mousavi and Karroubi to be hanged, every Iranian can see that the Supreme Leader has
dropped the last fig leaf of legality. rfi +1
What Happened Today, 1 March 2011 (10 Esfand), Across Iran
Running clashes along Enghelab, Valiasr, and Azadi until nightfall: Defying thousands of black-clad riot police and plainclothes Basij militiamen lining the sidewalks, crowds marched from Enghelab Square toward Azadi and Sadeghiyeh until after dark, chanting "Death to the Dictator". hrw
Protests spread to Mashhad, Isfahan, Shiraz, Rasht, and Ahvaz: Despite near-total internet slowdowns and jammed text messaging, thousands of protesters took to the streets in at least five other major cities including Mashhad,
Isfahan, Shiraz, Rasht, and Ahvaz. hrw
At least 200 protesters arrested in Tehran: Opposition sources and eyewitnesses reported tonight that security forces firing tear gas and charging crowds on motorcycles arrested at least 200 demonstrators across the capital. bbc
When the Monster of 1979 Locked Up Its Own Creators
Walking past the iron fence of Tehran University in the smoke tonight, I could not help thinking about the bitter arc of the last thirty-two years. Back in 1979, when Iran's revolution tore down constitutional law and independent courts to erect the absolute rule of the Supreme Jurist (Velayat-e Faqih), Iran's leftist parties and Islamist revolutionaries cheered the destruction of "bourgeois legal protections."
First the monster devoured the liberals and nationalists, then in the 1980s it slaughtered the leftists who had helped build its courts, then it locked Grand Ayatollah Montazeri under house arrest in Qom, and tonight, on 1 March 2011, it welded an iron gate across the alley of its own former Prime Minister and Speaker of Parliament. Yet listen to the twenty-year-olds coughing through tear gas on Azadi Street tonight: they are not fighting to return to 1979. They are fighting for the day every iron gate in Iran is torn off its hinges for good.
