The Redhunter

A few photos, though I'm not sure exactly when they were taken

This one is from CNN's excellent photo essay

From the Fox News story about the protests today

The clashes along one of Tehran's main avenues -- as described by witnesses -- had far fewer demonstrators than recent mass rallies for Mousavi. But they marked another blow to authorities who sought to intimidate protesters with harsh warnings and lines of black-clad police three deep in places.

The rallies also left questions about Mousavi's ability to hold together his protest movement, which claims that widespread fraud in June 12 elections robbed Mousavi of victory and kept hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in office.

Mousavi bewildered many followers by not directly replying to the ultimatum issued Friday by Iran's most powerful figure, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His stern order to Mousavi and others: Call off demonstrations or risk being held responsible for "bloodshed, violence and rioting."

So I'm not sure at all where this thing is going. It's possible the protests could just peter out.

Whether it does or not, this story today from the Los Angeles Times told us what we had pretty much guessed, that the regime was using a lot of violence against protesters:

Reporting from Tehran -- A huge swath of downtown Tehran erupted in fiery chaos today as helmeted security forces and pro-government militias armed with tear gas and water cannons battled stone-throwing protesters defying warnings from the country's supreme leader against further demonstrations over a disputed presidential election.

Fierce clashes pitting protesters against security forces and militiamen broke out when cordons of police attempted to block a rally from forming by beating demonstrators and pushing them into waiting police vans.

At one point, anti-riot police shot into the air after they roughed up a young woman and attracted the ire of protesters. A middle-aged man could be seen staggering along the sidewalk near Tehran University with blood dripping from his face.

Protesters formed into rock-throwing crowds that fought running battles with militiamen in camouflage uniforms for control of streets and intersections, witnesses said.

By nighttime, witnesses said, the unrest stretched from the side streets along Enghelab Street all the way from Azadi (Freedom) Street to Vali Asr Street, a miles-long corridor that is among the city's most important east-west thoroughfares. There were reports that disturbances had also broken out in other parts of the city, especially key squares in the north Tehran, but they could not be immediately confirmed.

And this bit from a CNN story is very interesting

Another (video) showed that the unrest had spread beyond the capital -- police clad in riot gear dispersing a crowd at a university in the southern city of Shiraz, beating screaming women with their batons.

Witnesses in Tehran said crowd members were chanting "Death to Khamenei!" and "I will kill whoever killed my brother!" The latter phrase dates to Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution that brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power.

What To Make Of It

At this point it's hard to know what to make of these reports. How widespread are the protests really? What do the majority of Iranians think? It's impossible to know. One big difference between what's happening now and 1979 is that there is no obvious government-in-waiting. From what I can tell, Mir Hossien Mousavi is only different from Ahmadinejad in degree, not in kind. So unless there are some disaffected mullahs or potential leaders we don't know about, or unless important elements of the military turn on the government, it's hard to see a full scale replacement of the current government. But if what's happening now leads to serious changes in the system, that'll be good enough for now.

Meamwhile, Back At the Ranch

President Obama issued a new statement on Iran today. Here it is in its entirety:

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.

That's certainly better than the mealymouthed stuff he'd been saying. Rich Lowry, writing at The Corner, says what I was thinking:

I await the thunderous denunciations of Obama's vastly improved statement today by all those who have defended his timidity to this point. No, actually I don't. I await hackish turn-abouts that praise Obama for saying the kind of things the evil "neo-cons" have been urging him to say for a week.

Yup.

Until today, anyway, Obama's behavior had gotten so bad that even the editors of The Washington Post took him to task. After correctly saying that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's speech yesterday was "a challenge to his internal foes -- and the Obama administration," they went on to say that.

Either way, President Obama's policy cannot remain unaffected. As of today, it remains tantalizingly possible that he may be able to engage a new and more reasonable Iranian government. But it is depressingly plausible that he will be facing a cornered, radicalized despotism. It would be unthinkable to attempt to do business with such a regime while pretending that nothing fundamental has changed. That is why Mr. Obama was ill-advised to muse that "the difference between [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and [opposition candidate Mir Hossein] Mousavi in terms of their actual positions may not be as great as has been advertised."

I wouldn't hold my breath. My guess is that no matter what the outcome Obama is determined to have his negotiations.

The Case For Meddling

In a piece in TIME Magazine, of all places, Dan Senor and Christian Whiton make the case for intervention (h/t TWS)

As for the notion that American silence is unhelpful to reformers, this simply contradicts historical experience. Successful movements to alter authoritarian and totalitarian regimes almost always depend on internal dissent backed by strong international support. Those key factors are often required to get a regime's enablers -- including domestic security forces -- to lose confidence and eventually succumb.

Time and again and around the world -- from as recently as Tibet in 2008, to Egypt in 2005, to Tiananmen in 1989 -- the prospects of reform dim considerably without international support. In fact, we know of no modern democratic evolution or revolution that has succeeded without some support and pressure from the west.

Most famous was the demise of the Eastern Bloc and then the Soviet Union itself, which came on the heels of years of sustained U.S.-led international pressure. Another example is South Korea, where energetic bipartisan U.S. pressure peaked in 1987 when U.S. ambassador Jim Lilley hand delivered a letter from President Reagan urging against a crackdown on protesters. The advice was heeded. Two weeks later the protesters' demands were met, and Korean democracy was born.

Other transitions in places like South Africa, Panama, Taiwan, Georgia, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and Indonesia also all involved considerable pressure from the outside world.

Given this history, could Iran be the one exception? President Obama thinks so. In making his case, the CIA's involvement in a coup in 1953 has become Exhibit A.

But even if many Iranians are still suspicious of U.S. intentions because of this coup, which happened at a perilous time in the Cold War, Mr. Obama must also consider that more than two-thirds of Iran's population is under thirty years of age and was born after the 1979 revolution. Their whole lives have been lived under this regime, and many correctly credit it with the misery with which they must contend, rather than a coup that occurred decades before they were born.

We do not want to minimize the myriad tactical dilemmas here in addressing a fluid situation. But the minority camp inside the Obama Administration seems to understand that the threshold dilemma must first be met. The job of an American president is not that of a history professor, but an actor in history. As masses march and bullets fly this weekend, a timeless question cannot be avoided. Even if we cannot know or control the outcome, we have a responsibility, through our actions as a nation, to answer clearly the question: whose side are we on? For President Obama's team, Monday could begin a critical week of reassessment.

Let's hope so.