2150 GMT: 1 Esfand. Students at 14 Azad (Technical) Universities around Iran have announced their support of Sunday's rallies.
In an interview with the Green outlet RASA TV, Mir Hossein Mousavi's advisor Ardeshir Amir Arjomand confirms that Sunday's marches go ahead even though Mousavi is under house arrest:
The regime knows that it must contain Mousavi and Karroubi. Karroubi and Mousavi know that they have to increase pressure on the regime. The people know that they must march. Yesterday's call for more protests finally hint that neither Mousavi or Karroubi are in a mood to compromise; the rhetoric to prosecute or execute the reformist leaders indicate that the regime is unwilling to negotiate.
Someone is going to fall off this tightrope. Someone is going to concede ground, or charge ahead further than they have ever gone. If this happens, expect widespread unrest and chaos in the streets, because this will be the minute the opposition moves from dissent to rebellion.
2210 GMT: Khabar Online reports on the slogans against Hashemi Rafsanjani in today's pro-government rally in Tehran. They included:
Master of cunning, Akbar Rafsanjani
Akbar R., Iranian Mubarak
Aghazadeh [Mehdi Hashemi?], your father has gone to the dogs
Be ashamed, quit bargaining
Hashemi, Where is you honour, Faezeh [Raffers daughter], where is your chastity?
2200 GMT: Here are pictures from the government-sponsored 'anti-sedition' rally held in Tehran today. The first image shows protesters getting handed signs.
2145 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Abolfazl Tabarzadi, a close relative of the Iran Democratic Front leader Heshmatollah Tabarzadi, has been freed on bail.
Tabarzadi was detained last December.
2135 GMT: 1 Esfand. Already the posters for Sunday's opposition march, agreed between a coalition of groups this afternoon, are appearing. This one links the rally to Mohammad Mokhtari and Sanee Zhaleh, the two men who died in the 25 Bahman marches on Monday:
2120 GMT: Rafsanjani Watch. Yesterday I noted the statement of the Assembly of Experts, chaired by former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, denouncing the US/Israel-backed "counter-revolution" of Monday's opposition marches.
This morning (0730 GMT) I wrote that regime supporters in Qom had chanted for the death of Rafsanjani.
So how could those two events fit together?
Faced with the heavy-handed response by the authorities, the question that lies ahead for the both Mousavi and Karroubi is pressing: Should they finally give up all pretence of compromise and resolution of conflict within the boundaries of the Islamic Republic and their reluctance to engage in a full-frontal confrontation with all elements of the regime, Khamenei included? Should they start to question the authority and wisdom of the Supreme Leader directly, as strongly requested by the protestors in the streets, or should they keep pressing with strategies which have been unsuccessful so far?
The rallies of 25 Bahman certainly blew the "breath of life" --- to borrow Karroubi's phrase --- into a stagnant Green movement, but it also brought to the fore compelling questions which need carefully-crafted answers.
2145 GMT: Punishing the 25 Bahman Error. Opposition websites are reporting that two managers of the conservative Aftab News have been arrested over an incident on Monday.
Aftab briefly reported that a permit had been granted for the opposition rally. The article was quickly pulled and the site taken off-line.
Aftab also reported that Turkish President Abdullah Gul, visiting Iran, had asked to join the march.
2135 GMT: Rafsanjani Chooses a Side? The Assembly of Experts, chaired by Hashemi Rafsanjani, has exalted last Friday's regime celebration of the Islamic Revolution and denounced Monday's opposition rallies as a "counter-revolutionary" movement of heretics supported by the US and Israel.
The regime had been worried enough in the week before 25 Bahman that it had embarked on another wave of detentions, seizing dozens of activists and journalists. It had raised the barriers on Internet sites, possibly slowing the network down; yesterday its operatives took down a number of key opposition webpages, including Mehdi Karroubi's Saham News. It had tried again to blind mainstream media by shutting away or keeping out its reporters. It put Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi under an undeclared house arrest, shoving Mousavi's wife Zahra Rahnavard back into her residential prison when she tried to join the demonstrations.
But in the end --- as each accumulating video testified --- the Supreme Leader and the Ahmadinejad Government had failed.
Last Thursday evening, while many Iranians were following the news of the revolutionary reforms in Egypt and the dethroning of another dictator in the Middle East, security forces in Iran were breaking into the residence of students, political activists, and even family members of Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, to arrest them and blunt the call for demonstrations against the regime on Valentine's Day.
The revolutionary incidents in Tunisia and Egypt have astounded and stimulated the Iranians, who returned to their homes after a nine-month challenge against the regime just before the last Valentine's Day. Many asked themselves and others during the past weeks: "Why have Tunisians and Egyptians made it, but we did not?"
So many Iranians, imitating the Egyptian and Tunisians, have opened a Facebook page in order to spark a new street demonstration.
2110 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Activist Ali Nabavi, whose wife Atefeh is already imprisoned, has been arrested.
2105 GMT: Deaths on 25 Bahman. Iranian officials are naming a second fatality in Monday's protests, 22-year-old Mohamad Mokhtari, 22, claiming he was shot by the banned Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO)
This morning, the Government also said Sanee Zhaleh, 26, had been killed by the MKO. That claim has also come under pressure with a photograph linking Zhaleh to the late Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, an opponent of the regime (see 1650 GMT).
2034 GMT: Prediction Come True. We said in our analysis this morning (see separate entry) that the regime would respond to Monday's marches by ramping up the intimidation and arrests.
And so it is already coming to pass. Tahavole Sabz reports a group of pro-Government men gathered in front of Mehdi Karroubi's residence this afternoon, chanting slogans against him.
The crowd assembled after a call by a website linked to the Government for a rally against Mir at Ark Square in front of the Tehran Prosecutor's office against Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, whose effigy was hung. After a few hours, the group moved towards Karroubi's residence.
Karroubi is under effective house arrest, prevented by security forces from leaving his home.
2140 GMT: Something's Missing. Peyke Iran prints the front pages of Iran's newspapers for Tuesday --- surprisingly, the marches of 25 Bahman have disappeared.
2130 GMT: Clerical Intervention. Grand Ayatollah Sane'i, meeting families of political prisoners, has said that today's tyranny is unprecedented in Iranian history.
The families also met Grand Ayatollahs Vahid Khorasani and Mousavi Ardebili.
2125 GMT: Political Prisoner Watch. Mohsen Barzegar and Hossein Zamen Zarrabi,members of the Islamic Association of Nooshiravani University of Babol, have been arrested.
Saturday, February 19, 2011 at 6:27