An amazing sequence of videos.

First one here.

Second one (make sure you watch all the way to the end):

Go read this.

NYTimes:

TEHRAN — Police officers used sticks and tear gas to force back thousands of demonstrators under plumes of black smoke in the capital on Saturday, a day after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said there would be “bloodshed” if street protests continued over the disputed presidential election. [...]

Iran’s divisions played out on the streets. Regular security forces stood back and urged protesters to go home to avoid bloodshed, while the feared pro-government militia, the Basij, beat protesters with clubs and, witnesses said, electric prods.

In some places, the protesters pushed back, rushing the militia in teams of hundreds: At least three Basijis were pitched from their motorcycles, which were then set on fire. The protesters included many women, some of whom berated as “cowards” men who fled the Basijis. There appeared to be tens of thousands of protesters in Tehran, far fewer than the mass demonstrations early last week, likely because of intimidation.

The street violence appeared to grow more intense as night fell, and there were unconfirmed reports of multiple deaths. A BBC journalist at Enghelab (Revolution) Square reported seeing one person shot by security forces. An amateur video posted on YouTube showed a woman bleeding to death after being shot by a Basiji, the text posted with the video said.

The video is here.

It seems the Iranian government has held back from a wholesale massacre, and, instead, attempting to strike fear through much smaller attacks.

President Obama released a statement today:

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said – “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

Yes we will.

NYTimes:

In his first public response to days of mass protests, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sternly warned opposition supporters on Friday to stay off the streets and raised the prospect of violence if the defiant, vast demonstrations continued.

Opposition leaders, he said, will be “responsible for bloodshed and chaos” if they do not call stop further rallies.

He said he would never give in to “illegal pressures” and denied their accusations that last week’s presidential election was rigged, praising the officially declared landslide for the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as an “epic moment that became a historic moment.” He spoke somberly for more than an hour and a half at Friday prayers to tens of thousands of people at Tehran University, with Mr. Ahmadinejad in attendance. His sermon was broadcast over loudspeakers to throngs in the adjoining streets, and the crowds erupted repeatedly in roars of support. Opposition supporters had spread the word among themselves not to attend.

This is upsetting. Not that I really expected an embrace of the protests, but this is clearly hostile, and points to a severe and violent crackdown is on the way.

An email sent to Nico Pitney:

I am in Sweden and have so many iranian students around me. Today everybody was desperate after hearing Khamenei’s speach. They didn’t expect the leader to come to their side, but to search for a little more time and give a more ambiguous speach to the country. Now nobody knows what will happen, but they know that it will be bloody: either people will stop the uprising, in which case there there will be so much violence and arrests towards the people, or they will try to overthrow all the system, in which case there will be a bloody revolution, successful or unsuccessful. It is not so clear what people want to do now. My girlfriends’ parents in Tehran say they think people will give up. Nobody wants to die, with families still remembering the 1979 revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. But it all depends also on Moussavi-Kathami-Karroubi-Rafsanjani and what they will say. Are they ready to wage war to the country? The hope of everybody is in an internal split in the leadership, the deposition of Khamenei, or at least some big sectors of army joining the people, but everybody agrees this will be very difficult to realize.

There are multiple rallies being organized tomorrow.  Go out and show your support.  It’s the least you can do.

Another day, another gigantic crowd of Iranians demanding democracy.  We seem to be stuck in some sort of staring contest, both sides waiting for the other to blink.  The showdown may come tomorrow, when Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei will be leading the nation in prayers, which may provide fodder for a confrontation, although Moussavi appears to be trying to avoid the confrontation.  The protesters in Iran have been amazingly well-disciplined so far, showing no signs of non-instigated violence.  This is more than can be said about the Iranian parliament, apparently:

After Ansari, Abutorabi took the floor again and continued questioning the plainclothes security forces once again. At this point Hosseinian, Koochakzadeh, and resaee, the three biggest supporters of Ahmadinejad in the parliament, started a verbal argument which ended with a number of physical fights. As a result a number of pro and ant Ahmadinejad members of the parliament join the fight and start slapping and pushing each other.

In the end, the anti Ahmadinejad block claims that they will expose the identities of those behind the plainclothes security forces.

Keep in mind that the pro and anti Ahmadinejad blocks belong to the same political party! I think the government is starting to crack up from the inside.

Rafsanjani is still quiet, with no news about the unconfirmed emergency meeting of the Assembly of Experts.  Meanwhile, state run news agencies are trying to undercut his legitimacy by attacking his character, and making sure his relatives are displayed prominently in their coverage of rallies.

A new video out shows some of the violence that occurred at Tehran University a few days ago:

Meanwhile, in Washington, Barack Obama is still being attacked for not vocally backing the protesters in a significant way, even though Bush’s former negotiator on Iran is apparently on Obama’s side:

“President Ahmadinejad would like nothing better than to see an aggressive series of statements from the United States that would put the U.S. in the center of this, and I think President Obama is avoiding that quite rightly,” Burns said.

Obama said he respects Iran’s sovereignty and that “this is not a dispute for the U.S. to be the center of. It’s up to Iranians to decide who Iran’s future leaders will be,” Burns said.

Obama “demonstrated clear sympathy for the reformers,” the former ambassador said. “I think the fact that he’s been low-key about it and the fact that he is saying denial of rights and violence are of a concern to him, and that he was inspired by the reformers, is, I think, the right thing to say.”

I’ll end with another dispatch from Lindsey Hilsum at Channel 4 News:

I rarely enjoy political cartoons, mostly because they usually try too hard, or they’re old news by the time I see them. Here’s one that particularly tickled my fancy.

(via John Cole)

Amazing sight from today’s protest in Iran:

via guardian:

The man who leaked the real election results from the Interior Ministry – the ones showing Ahmadinejad coming third – was killed in a suspicious car accident, according to unconfirmed reports, writes Saeed Kamali Dehghan in Tehran.

This is the type of information that really disturbs me. There’s bound to be violence when two sides collide on such a powerful issue, but this is downright evil.

Following the growing trend of showing support for the Iranians, Juice The Blog is going green for a while. Enjoy!

CNN:

Meanwhile, the country’s powerful Revolutionary Guard — which enforces strict Islamic codes — said it will prosecute Web sites it accuses of inciting riots, adding to a ban on foreign media reporting on the protests and a block on Internet site such as Facebook or Twitter.

In response to this, I’ll remind all of you that we posted how to set up a proxy server for Iranians to access Twitter here.

There are some unconfirmed reports swirling around that Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a senior cleric who supports Mir-Hossein Moussavi, and also the head of the Assembly of Experts, has called an emergency meeting of the Assembly of Experts in the holy city of Qom.

The Assembly of Experts most notable role in the Islamic Republic is selecting the Supreme Leader.  There has been rumors all weekend that Rafsanjani was in Qom quietly counting the votes needed to remove Khameini from power.

Rafsanjani was President in Iran from 1989-1997, succeeding Khameini, who at the time, was serving as both the President and the Supreme Leader.  He also ran for a third term in 2005 against Ahmedinejad and lost in the runoff, amidst allegations of voting irregularities.

Rafsanjani is seen as somewhat of a moderate, as opposed to the hard-liners of Khameini and Ahmedinejad.  If this report is true, this would be a major development.

Meanwhile, it seems that demonstrations have continued today, and Moussavi has called for a Day of Mourning tomorrow:

“A number of our countrymen were wounded or martyred,” Mousavi said, calling the day of mourning for Thursday. “I ask the people to express their solidarity with the families … by coming together in mosques or taking part in peaceful demonstrations,” Mousavi said on his website.

NIAC posts a very helpful diagram from RAND, to help keep track of all of the security forces in Iran:

Based on what I’ve read, it seems that the Basij and the IRGC (or Sepah) have been responsible for most of the violence.  Obviously, this is very hard to confirm.

On a more general note, however, I think that a nation has some serious structural problems if it has 2 entirely distinct militaries, 3 paramilitary groups with conflicting loyalties, and a general law enforcement agency.

Lindsey Hilsum continues her stellar reporting, recapping today’s events, despite a government crackdown on foreign journalists:

One more thing that I will reluctantly post is this video. I’m warning you that it is extremely disturbing and I will not be watching it again. It does, however, provide an isolated example of the brutality that has occurred over the past few days.

Via Reuters (as pointed out on Sullivan’s blog) :

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it had contacted the social networking service Twitter to urge it to delay a planned upgrade that would have cut daytime service to Iranians who are disputing their election.

Confirmation that the U.S. government had contacted Twitter came as the Obama administration sought to avoid suggestions it was meddling in Iran’s internal affairs as the Islamic Republic battled to control deadly street protests over the election result.

Twitter and Facebook have been used as a tool by many young people to coordinate protests over the election’s outcome.

President Barack Obama said earlier on Tuesday he believed “people’s voices should be heard and not suppressed” in Iran.

According to the AP:

Iranian authorities are restricting all journalists working for foreign media from firsthand reporting on the streets. The rules cover all journalists, including Iranians working for foreign media. It blocks images and eyewitness descriptions of the protests and violence that has followed last week’s disputed elections.

The order issued Tuesday limits journalists for foreign media to work only from their offices, conducting telephone interviews and monitoring official sources such as state television. It comes as foreign reporters in Iran to cover the elections began leaving the country. Iranian officials say they will not extend their visas.

Iranian state-run media is reporting that many opposition leaders have been arrested “with explosives and guns.”

Luckily, we still have Twitter to get the real story.  If you want to help the people in Iran access it, here’s instructions on how to set up a proxy server (Windows, Mac, Linux).