UPDATE (7:33 p.m.): NPR reporting…
Security officials posing as clients entered the Tehran offices of one of Iran’s leading human rights lawyers today and arrested him, Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi just told NPR’s Davar Iran Ardalan. … “Once they were inside they immediately confiscated his computer and other documents and they arrested Mr. Soltani,” Ebadi said in today’s interview. “As far as we know, they did not have an arrest warrant.” (audio follows)
UPDATE (3:19 p.m.): Ken Ballen on CNN is on what looks like to me damage control after he got creamed in analysis in the last few days for his poll from TFT.
UPDATE (2:36 p.m.): Conservatives on Iran… Rep. Mike Pence introduces resolution supporting Iranians. Michael Ledeen is a wingnut of steroids. Instapundit goes green. John Bolton on Politico. Michael Goldfarb pushes Iraq model. While Mike Krikorian would rather believe that Iranians must be American, aka Christian, for there to be a revolution.
UPDATE (1:33 p.m.): BBC is now GREEN. umm… not green see The Lede 2:07 pm.
UPDATE (1:08 p.m.): CNN responds to Iran media crackdown… “And because of these new restrictions, what we’re doing now at CNN, is we’re relaxing our usual vetting process a bit when it comes to information that we get via email, tweets or IReports…”
UPDATE (1:00 p.m.): Flickr shots from Iran’s “green wave” today.
UPDATE (12:07 p.m.): Obama with South Korea’s Lee got a question at the end of the presser on Iran. Short snippets (The Lede has more): “… it’s not productive… to be seen as meddling in Iranian elections… deep concerns about the election.” Full statement below:
Q Iran?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: It was only — let’s see — I think seven hours ago or eight hours ago when I — I have said before that I have deep concerns about the election. And I think that the world has deep concerns about the election. You’ve seen in Iran some initial reaction from the Supreme Leader that indicates he understands the Iranian people have deep concerns about the election.
Now, it’s not productive, given the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling — the U.S. President meddling in Iranian elections. What I will repeat and what I said yesterday is that when I see violence directed at peaceful protestors, when I see peaceful dissent being suppressed, wherever that takes place, it is of concern to me and it’s of concern to the American people. That is not how governments should interact with their people.
And my hope is, is that the Iranian people will make the right steps in order for them to be able to express their voices, to express their aspirations. I do believe that something has happened in Iran where there is a questioning of the kinds of antagonistic postures towards the international community that have taken place in the past, and that there are people who want to see greater openness and greater debate and want to see greater democracy. How that plays out over the next several days and several weeks is something ultimately for the Iranian people to decide. But I stand strongly with the universal principle that people’s voices should be heard and not suppressed.
Okay? All right. Thank you, guys.
UPDATE (11:16 a.m.): Patrick J. Buchanan…
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will never recapture that revolutionary purity he once seemed to possess as the man of the people who was elected president in the upset of 2005. Today, he appears, as The New York Times puts it, “as the shrewd and ruthless front man for a clerical military and political elite that is more unified and emboldened than at any time since the 1979 revolution.”
UPDATE (10:51 a.m.): from niacINsight:
10:38 am: Twitter feeds from Tehran are reporting that today’s worker strike went according to plan, with most offices in Tehran deserted.
________________Original post below___________
For the first time, in that crowd, it seemed to me that the forces of change, the deeper Iran of civility and courage that I first encountered several months ago, might prevail. Seldom has silence been more eloquent or potent. – Roger Cohen
One of Iranian’s original bloggers, Saeed Hajjarian, according to Reuters, has been arrested. With the story of Twitter’s importance in such a repressive news environment making news everywhere.
There will be a recount of “some” of the ballots. It’s 2000, Iran style, which makes it even worse. But here it is and it’s historic:
Iran’s influential Guardian Council agreed Tuesday to recount some ballots from last week’s disputed presidential election, as pro- and anti-government demonstrators prepared for a possible face-off in a public square.
The unusual step by the council, several members of which had supported President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s bid for re-election, was quickly rejected as insufficient by the opposition.
Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and two other challengers have called on the council to nullify all of the election results and order new balloting.
But as small as this may seem, it’s really illustrative of a huge backtrack on the Supreme Leader’s part, historic.
Few suggest yet that Ayatollah Khamenei’s hold on power is at risk. But, analysts say, he has opened a serious fissure in the face of Islamic rule and one that may prove impossible to patch over, particularly given the fierce dispute over the election that has erupted amid the elite veterans of the 1979 revolution.Even his strong links to the powerful Revolutionary Guards — long his insurance policy — may not be decisive as the confrontation in Iran unfolds.
“Khamenei would always come and say, ‘Shut up; what I say goes,’ ” said Azar Nafisi, the author of two memoirs about Iran, including “Reading Lolita in Tehran.” “Everyone would say, ‘O.K., it is the word of the leader.’ Now the myth that there is a leader up there whose power is unquestionable is broken.”
As you can imagine, Mousavi is “not very optimistic about their judgment.” But the fact that the Guardian Council is making this move reveals they get what’s taking place outside the chamber.
Iran has banned all foreign media from covering the rallies, so the effort to control what’s going on is increasing, as is expected. But Khamenei has reversed himself, opening the door for something to happen. What will manifest from it, however, is far less certain.
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