The Latest from Iran (11 January): Reading the Regime

2045 GMT: Sanctions La-Dee-Dah. Associated Press is a-quiver over this statement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, though I'm not sure why:

It is clear that there is a relatively small group of decision makers inside Iran. They are in both political and commercial relationships, and if we can create a sanctions track that targets those who actually make the decisions, we think that is a smarter way to do sanctions. But all that is yet to be decided upon.

That's not a breakthrough declaration, only a holding one. The White House does not want the sweeping sanctions proposed by Congress and will go for a "targeted" approach. It's just not clear who is being targeted with what.

1945 GMT: Journalist Mohammad Reza Nourbakhsh has been sentenced to three years in jail by an appeals court for participating in rallies on 15 June. Nourbakhsh was originally given a six-year prison term.

1940 GMT: Beaten in Detention. Kalemeh claims Mehdi Mahmoudian, a senior member of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front, has been beaten by the authorities in Evin Prison.

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Latest Iran Video: Military Commander Mullen on US Options (10 January)
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Iran: Challenge to The Government in “The Heartlands”?
The Latest from Iran (10 January): “Middle” Ground?

1935 GMT: The Detained. Back from an academic break to find that an Iranian activist has posted the names of 156 people arrested between the religious days of Tasoa and Ashura (26-27 December) and 9 January.

1635 GMT: Spinning Rafsanjani. Hashemi Rafsanjani, speaking as chairman of the Expediency Council, has made another general call for reconcilation.

Press TV portrays this as "the Iranian nation should follow the rule of the law and avoid taking extrajudicial measures as not to obstruct the path of justice". While this could be applied as an injunction to both the opposition and Government forces, the state outlet puts the emphasis is on following the guidance of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic: "If [this is] obeyed, balance will return to the society and there will be no room left for frictions. Foreign enemies have clung to the current state of affairs in the country as it is apparent in their tone."

The website also tries to rebut the claim, made by Rafsanjani's brother this weekend, that the former President has been pressured into silence. Instead, it claimed that "Rafsanjani rejected the notion and said he was always trying to resolve the problems away from media hype".

1615 GMT: Those Wacky Leveretts. They may have had their pro-Government, anti-Green movement opinion, published in The New York Times, shredded by analyst after analyst, but that doesn't stop Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett from returning to their defence of the regime.

On their website, the Leveretts crudely twist a Wall Street Journal article (which was considered in an EA analysis yesterday on the US policy on sanctions, Iran's nuclear programme, and a "rights-first" approach) into "THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION MOVES TOWARD REGIME CHANGE IN ITS IRAN POLICY". They select and crop quotes, to the point of distortion, but this is their sleight-of-hand claim:

Buying into the proposition that the Islamic Republic is imploding has the effect of driving the policy argument toward support for “regime change” in Tehran.

Umm, no. There is a difference between analysis --- in this case, evaluating the internal difficulties in the Iranian regime --- and advocacy. It's the "is-ought" difference, one which should be picked up by an undergraduate student, let alone a supposed foreign-policy expert: noting that something "is" happening is not the same as declaring it "ought" to happen.

The Leveretts are not undergraduate students, so they know what they are doing. By putting out this claim, "whether President Obama and his advisers want to call their policy “regime change”, that is precisely the direction in which they are moving", they will buttress the propaganda line of the Iranian Government that the opposition can all be attributed to "foreign instigation". (I heard this declaration loud and clear in two presentations, including one by an  academic who works with the Leveretts, at the Beirut conference I attended last week.)

Since the survival of the Iranian regime rests in part on making that allegation stick, and since the Leveretts support the quest for that survival, let's just recognise this piece for what it is: an "ought" piece of advocacy rather than an "is" contribution to analysis.

(P.S. to Flynt and Hillary: Throwing in a picture of Senator Joseph Lieberman, who is calling for a "rights-based" approach to sanctions, with Ahmad Chalabi of Iraq "regime change" infamy, is a really nice touch.)

1505 GMT: Today's Fist-Shaker. It's Iran Prosecutor General Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejeie making an appearance to tell Tehran Prosecutor General Abbas Jafari Doulatabadi that it's time for measures against "elements behind the recent sedition....It is expected that the demands ... that those who were leading the post-election sedition are put on trial, are met."

1500 GMT: The "Reformist" Push. Former President Mohammad Khatami has put out his own statement, following that of Mehdi Karroubi, calling for an end to the "extreme violence" and dialogue over political, social, and economic issues.

1455 GMT: A Day for Analyses. Not sure why, but a lot of information seems to be falling into place today. The latest topic is Iran's nuclear manoeuvres with "the West" --- we've got an exclusive on Tehran's latest attempt to keep the discussions going.

1340 GMT: Waving Sticks. EA readers have offered comments considering the reasons for this weekend's declaration by General David Petraeus, the head of the US military's Central Command, that all military options are open in contingency plans for Iran (see yesterday's updates).

For the Iranian Government, however, there is a simple reading. The Foreign Ministry spokesman declared today, "[Petraeus'] comments are thoughtless and it is better that any statement made in this regard take a constructive approach."

1315 GMT: The Karroubi Statement (see 1150 GMT). Reuters has picked up on Mehdi Karroubi's declaration with takeaway quotes such as....

[I am] prepared for any disaster.....Some are thinking that they can block the reform course by closing down newspapers and putting reformers in jail ... but I remain firm in the path that I have chosen....I announce that such threats will not frighten me and will not weaken me in this path.

Agence France Presse has a shorter but similar article. Inexplicably, both Reuters and AFP miss the even more important part of Karroubi's statement, the 5-point proposal for resolution.

1200 GMT: We've posted a special analysis, based on latest developments and speech, of the battles within the Iranian regime. The conclusion? This will only be resolved "when someone stabs Ahmadinejad in the back".

1150 GMT: Karroubi's "5-Point" Plan. First it was Mir Hossein Mousavi with a 5-point post-Ashura proposal for political resolution; now it's Mehdi Karroubi.

Karroubi has written an open letter proposing 1) admission by Government officials of injustices; 2) adherence to the values of the Islamic Revolution through guarantees such as freedom of the press and legal rights; 3) adherence to non-violence for reform and acceptance of the Supreme Leader; 4) acceptance of criticism and an end to violence against those who dissent; 5) a national debate so Iranian people can make a free and informed decision about the way forward for the country.

1145 GMT: Rah-e-Sabz reports that 56 professors at Elm-o-Sanat University in Tehran have written in support of students, asking that they are able to take examinations without fear of disciplinary action over protests.

The intervention follows an open letter by almost 90 professors at Tehran University to the Supreme Leader, asking for a cessation of violence against demonstrations.

1130 GMT: The "Incomplete" Detainees Report. Parallelling and extending the "reformist" criticism that the Parliament report on detainee abuse is incomplete, Ayande News --- which is far from reformist --- is claiming that Iranian state media have not given a full account of the report and its discussion in the Majlis. Ayande even asks whether those responsible for the abuses at Kahrizak Prison are also responsible for output on Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

1110 GMT: Foreign Presence. The Government's overseas push is in Syria, as Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki visits Damascus. No significant news has come out of the talks so far.

0920 GMT: No major news this morning, but a lot of individual developments with deeper meanings this weekend. The Supreme Leader's speech, President Ahmadinejad's appearance in Parliament, the arrest of the Mothers of Mourning and their supporters in Laleh Park, the Parliamentary report on the abuse of detainees: all have gotten headline coverage, but the intra-regime tensions that they reveal have yet to be analysed, if recognised. We'll make a start on that analysis later today.

Meanwhile, Josh Shahryar and Mike Dunn have special analyses trying to put away the recent mis-information on #IranElection, Twitter, and security. Shahryar offers final words of reply to Will Heaven, the blogger for The Daily Telegraph who tried to blame "Twitterati" for endangering the Iranian people, while Dunn separates myth from reality over "Deep Packet Inspection".

The Latest from Iran (8 January): Karroubi Under Attack

2300 GMT: A slowish evening so we'll wish everyone good night and offer an early morning update on Saturday before I fly out of Beirut.

1725  GMT: Modifying Motahari. Amidst a rush of news, I was excessive in reporting that principlist Ali Motahari had declared in an interview (see 1140 GMT) that an Iranian can be against the concept of Supreme Leadership but remain within the framework of the Islamic Republic.

An EA reader offers this clarification, "Motahari, remarking that one of the roots of the post-election events is the lack of tolerance for opposition to the government and to fundamentalists, said, 'When the leaders of the protesters accept the system [of the Islamic Republic], we cannot call them the pawns of America and Israel. They also accept the Supreme Leadership. Now, while they may not accept a particular opinion of the Supreme Leader, that doesn\'t take them outside of the system.'"

1720 GMT: Apologies for the long break, which was due to conference duties here in Beirut.

1140 GMT: Another Principlist Move For Compromise? High-profile MP Ali Motahari has reportedly been speaking in the last 24 hours of the need for acceptance of criticism: "We have to accept that one can be against Supreme Leadership but within framework of regime."

Calling for honesty, justice, and integrity, Motahari asks why President Ahmadinejad cannot admit mistakes and ask for forgiveness. He blames post-election events on stubbornness of both sides, saying that all have their share of blame.

1130 GMT: Rah-e-Sabz claims that, in recent days, eye witnesses to the running-over of protestors by police cars during the Ashura demonstrations have been identified and arrested.

1045 GMT: The Karroubi Story. Saham News is updating....

As we reported last night, the reported group of 200 around the home of Hojetoleslam Ghavami, where Karroubi was staying for a mourning ceremony, attacked the residence with stones and bricks. City officials and even the provincial governor tried to stop the assault but were unsuccessful. After four hours and the advice of "special forces" (possibly his State-appointed security detail) and anti-riot police, Karoubi decided to leave Qazvin for Tehran.

As the car was leaving the complex, shots were fired at it, breaking the supposedly bullet-proof windows. Karroubi said that there was not much his protection team could do; firing back in defence would have led to their prosecution. He added that only God knows why the guns that are supposed to be used only to defend the nation and the country are used against the people.

1035 GMT: Gunfire at Karroubi. Associated Press, France 24, and the leading activist site A Street Journalist, all apparently drawing information from the website connected to Mehdi Karroubi, report that the cleric's motorcade was fired upon as it left Qazvin, northwest of Tehran, today.

Yesterday the home where Karroubi was staying was attacked by a group, reportedly 200 people in plainclothes.

0855 GMT: Where's Mahmoud? Still travelling --- after his visits to Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, President Ahmadinejad was in Bahrain yesterday, declaring, "Vigilance, unity and cooperation of the Muslim nations will foil the enemies' conspiracies and those who sow the seeds of discord among Muslims and Islamic states are either ignorant or traitors."

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Iran & Twitter 101: Rereading A Tale of Two Twitterers
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0840 GMT: Releases. The son of Ayatollah Jalaleddin Taheri and the brother and nephew of former minister Abdollah Nouri, both detained during the protests around the death of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri and Ashura, have been released.

0830 GMT: Illegitimate Prayers. Ayatollah Ali Mohammad Dastgheib has declared that any religious services in the Qoba Mosque of Shiraz are invalid. Dastgheib was effectively silenced by the regime at the end of his December when pro-Government groups took over the mosque and closed the cleric's offices.

0825 GMT: We've posted a second analysis, complement that of Josh Shahryar, responding to the recent challenge to name the "leader" and declare the objectives of the Iranian opposition movements.

0620 GMT: Trashing Neda. Iranian state media is making another push to turn the killing of Neda Agha Soltan into an act in a foreign plot for regime change.

A new documentary for Iranian television, summarised in a Press TV video, made Neda both a participant and then the sacrifice of the evil scheme: she allegedly threw imitation blood onto her face as part of a faked shoot to discredit the security forces, but she was later slain by the two men who claim to have saved her live: her music teacher and Dr Arash Hejazi.

Hejazi has responded in an interview that this is a "shameless and worthless" attempt to shift blame from security forces by a regime which "has been doing everything it can to distance itself from Neda's death and throw responsibility on others".

0515 GMT: We begin this morning with a special analysis by Josh Shahryar, taking care of the wrong questions about "the opposition". As that opposition considers next moves, bits and pieces are now emerging from the relative political quiet.

The Government continues to link the political, legal, and military efforts to crush the Green movement. Days after the head of Iran's judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, declared that all judges must be political, he reached out to the armed forces for his deputy, Brigadier General Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr.

An EA reader informs us that Dr. Yadollah Eslami, an ophtalmologist and editor-in-chief of the League of All-Term Majlis Deputies, was arrested last Monday by the Revolutionary Guard. His detention is a reminder of the answers that can be given to the "wrong questions" of those who desire to dismiss or distort the opposition; in October Eslami wrote:

The green movement is dynamic and growing. By not reacting immediately and prematurely to events and statements, the movement fosters deliberation and wisdom. Its decision-making on any given issue or occasion is an organized process, which seeks to share information and raise awareness. It has a specific goal in mind with every step it takes. It has spawned its own literature, poetry, and music. It has avoided blind violence and proved itself patient and deliberate. This movement’s dynamism and bold approach gave hope to all sectors of Iranian society. It has established a meaningful relationship with religious and ethnic minorities. It recognizes and respects all regional groups and their values. It creates and disseminates its slogans appropriately and in proportional response to prevalent needs.

UPDATED Iran & Twitter 101: Getting The Facts Right --- A Response to Will Heaven

UPDATE 8 January: Will Heaven will not give up --- he has made another attempt, informed only by anecdote, distortion, and speculation, to justify his campaign for silence on Twitter about #IranElection.

I will break my own vow of silence (see comments below), regarding any discussion of and thus further publicity for the thoughtless and indefensible in Mr Heaven's "analysis", to say this:

@WillHeaven: You insult those of us who use #Twitter wisely and, hopefully, effectively. You insult @persiankiwi, & you insult the people of #Iran. If you have any decency, stop.

(P.S. Maybe you can be of use writing about #uksnow.)

---

Josh Shahryar writes:

Waking up every day and being a journalist is a very conflicting job. Sometimes, you read the work of other journalists who’ve written responsibly and with full knowledge of the subject matter and you feel proud of who you are. Other times, people write things that make you want to just sit there and mourn the fact that he or she belongs to the same profession as you.

Last week, in the online edition of Britain's Daily Telegraph, Will Heaven critiqued the people who have been active on Twitter for the cause of Iran --- some now for almost 200 days --- under the headline, “Iran and Twitter: the fatal folly of the online revolutionaries”.

Don’t get me wrong, Mr Heaven has freedom of speech on his side. But every now and then, I take the liberty to use the same right to point out where fellow journalists for filling the internet with assertions that misrepresent the truth and "analysis" that blatantly insults not only our intelligence but also our characters. I think Will Heaven fits that bill quite neatly.

I am simply going to reply to Mr Heaven's paragraphs one by one in order. I have not changed any of his words, and I will address him directly.

HEAVEN: As young men and women took to the streets of Tehran on Sunday to confront the Revolutionary Guard, another very different protest sprang to life all over the world. This one didn't face tear-gas or gunfire. And its participants didn't risk prison, torture or death. It took place on 2009's most trendy website: Twitter.com.

Well, now, how about the risk of having your family imprisoned, tortured or killed? Did you know that dozens of social media activists have families in Iran and dozens more have received e-mails from the Iranian government telling them to stop or else their families would face serious harm? Did you know that Fereshteh Ghazi (@iranbaan), another activist who writes about prisoners, has family in Iran? Did you know that Isa Saharkhiz, the father of the most active of the Twitterati, Mehdi Saharkhiz (@onlymehdi), is in prison and being tried in connection with the protests?

I think everyone would agree that even if these people aren’t personally facing imprisonment, torture and death, they might deserve a moment of recognition for persisting in their reporting when their families facing the same peril. If you don't choose to join recognition of them, at least pause and include these facts before you wag your finger at their supposed security.

For Twitter enthusiasts, this has been a bumper year. With a new online tool at their chubby fingertips, they've helped to change the world. Or at least, that's what they think: the so-called Iranian Twitter Revolution recently won a Webby award for being "one of the top 10 internet moments of the decade".”

Chubby fingertips? Nice use of the stereotype that portrays all geeks as being overweight. This here is just a direct and far from original insult. I’m not sure how you manage to call yourself a journalist and use such degrading language to get your fictitious points across.

As for the Iranian "Twitter Revolution", that is a creation of the mainstream media who are ignorant of what is going on inside and outside Iran.

If the protests in Iran are turning into a revolution, social networking websites had very little to do with it. The reason why the site are getting kudos is because they helped people bypass the failure of the mainstream media to cover the events in Iran and get informed about what was really happening on the streets of Tehran as well as shore up outside support for the cause.

Get this straight; it was the failure to provide timely and accurate news regarding the events in Iran that forced the citizens of the world to step up and help educate people about the courage and perseverance of the Iranian people and the brutality and inhumanity of the Iranian government. You can whine all you want, but you, if you are representing a responsible "traditional" media vs. a supposedly tangential and irresponsible social media, have failed. And the fact that you failed does not give you the right to attempt and devalue the work of others.

Let me tell you why I find that deeply troubling. There has been no revolution in Iran. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has held on to power after a rigged election. Meanwhile, protests continue to be violently suppressed by government forces and unregulated militias, with human rights groups saying that at least 400 demonstrators have been killed since June. Dozens of those arrested remain unaccounted for, and many of those set free tell of rape and vicious beatings in Iran's most notorious prisons.

So don't tell me that Twitter and other online networks have improved the situation in Iran. It's deluded to think that "hashtags", "Tweets" and "Twibbons" have threatened the regime for a second. If all the internet could muster in a decade was smug armchair activists and pontificating techies, we may as well all log off in the New Year.

Again, Twitter has not improved the situation in Iran; it has improved the flow of news about that situation to the outside world. It has helped mobilize activists outside Iran, protesting across the world, to pressure the international community into taking action against the Iranian government.

If you had followed the news or understood what you have read, you would have known about the 25 July protests where thousands of people gathered in more than 100 cities around the globe in support of the Iranian people’s struggle for human rights. There have been dozens of protests in dozens of other cities since then; I attended one just a week ago. These protests have served to both inform the public and to pressure governments to deal with Iran’s repression of its citizens more harshly then they might have otherwise would have.

This would not have been possible if social networking websites had not connected people and informed them about what was going on inside Iran since, frankly, I see the mainstream media's primary interest in Iran as the nuclear energy program.

Your ignorance does not change the facts on the ground.

Here's the other thing "social media experts" will forget to tell you: dictatorships across the world now use their own tools to hunt down online protesters. In Iran, for instance, the government controls the internet with a nationalised communications company. Using a state-of-the-art method called "Deep Packet Inspection", data packages sent between protesters are now automatically broken down, checked for keywords, and reconstructed within milliseconds. Every Tweet and Facebook message, in other words, is firmly on the regime's radar.

As a result, the crackdown in Iran has been easier than ever before. Once the Revolutionary Guard intercept a suspect message, they are able to pinpoint the location of a guilty protester using their computer's IP address. Then it's just a question of knocking on doors – and confiscating laptops and PCs for hard evidence.
Sadly, when this happens, those outside Iran cannot always absolve themselves of responsibility. If you're an internet user in Britain who communicates with an Iranian protester online, or encourages them to send anti-regime messages over the internet, you could be putting their life in danger.

Here’s a bit of education in anti-filtering software. There’s a software called Tor –-- similar to Freegate --- that allows people to connect to the internet without fear of Deep Pocket Inspection tools. You can figure out that someone is using Tor with DPI, but you can never find out what they’re sending. Our "chubby-fingered" friends were intelligent and passionate enough to get that into Iranian hands as early as June. And that’s not all. Net activists have already created several new anti-DPI softwares that have already reached Iranians and are being skillfully used by a select few to get information out. With these, the government can’t even figure out if someone is using anti-filtering software or is connected straight up.

If this had not occurred, you would not get all the videos, pictures and information readily available within minutes of protests in Iran.

Just because you do not know about these things does not mean they do not exist or they do not work.

And contrary to what you claim, no one actually has to encourage Iranians to communicate information about their country to the outside world. They do it themselves. They feel a need to help the world understand what is going on in their country and not have to read fear-mongering articles on the mainstream media about how Iran is going to bomb Israel and there would be World War III and such. What the techies have done is help them access the software that allows them to do it without fear of getting arrested.

There's nothing wrong with spreading awareness outside Iran, but it's horribly naive to think that supporting illegal activity in a foreign country has no ethical dimension. It's equally foolish, of course, to kid yourself that you're on the front line.
For the Iranian authorities, the detective work often doesn't have to be remotely hi-tech. As Evgeny Morozov recently noted, it is now possible to calculate a person's sexual orientation by analysing who their Facebook friends are. Sure, it's a quirky news story in Britain, but terrifying for gay people living in countries such as Iran, where homosexuality is outlawed.

Illegal activity? What illegal activity? Iranians are granted the right to take to streets and peacefully protest by the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Just because the government is overstepping Iranian law does not mean you have to go out of your way to accommodate their will to hammer home your fallacious arguments. As for your assertion that helping Iranians spread the word about the situation is wrong, well, maybe you should know that freedom of expression is a universal human right. No country’s laws can infringe upon that. None.

I’m not sure you know that Facebook and Twitter are officially banned in Iran right now. People in Iran who are using the two applications have created accounts specifically to disseminate news and information, not for dating. Even if the government finds those accounts, it will not be able to trace them back to their owners because of new software.

Perhaps Barack Obama was one of the first world leaders to realise that social media have their limits. In March, on the feast of Nowruz (the Farsi New Year), he posted an online video in which he addressed the Iranian people and their leaders directly.

It signaled the launch of "YouTube diplomacy", one commentator gushed. But, like the Twitter Revolution, it has achieved very little – Iran remains determined to become a nuclear power, and America is still described by the regime as "the Great Satan".

The jab at YouTube diplomacy is another creation of those in the media who know little about what is going on during protests on the streets in daylight, even with video evidence at hand, but who are more than ready to scare the hell out of everyone by proclaiming that Iran will get the ability to make a nuclear bomb soon. Your own retreat into that nuclear shelter, under cover of the ludicrous and unfounded accusations about the movement inside as well as outside Iran, is only an addition to that evasion.

So what can we do? Well, perhaps that’s a question for 2010, because the internet, combined with “offline” networks, probably can encourage openness in dictatorships. But before we work out how, let’s first drop the self-congratulation.

What can you do? You can actually report after researching the subject you are about to write on. You can find sources inside Iran to get some real news out. And you can stop hurling insults like poisoned candy.

Finally, we don’t need to self-congratulate ourselves. The media does it for us quite neatly. I will point you to just one article about the Twitter Revolution published a few days ago in one of Sweden’s largest tabloid newspapers, Expressen:

Today Mousavi's Facebook page [a page run by activists from outside Iran] is a more secure source of news than Al-Jazeera and the BBC, while micro-blogs and websites like the dailyniteowl.com and rahesabz.net [both websites that use direct information from tweets and Facebook] offer sympathizers as well as media consumers, fast, reliable news [about Iran] that traditional newsrooms cannot provide.

That is just one out of hundreds of articles that have been published about the worldwide effort to help get the reality on Iran’s streets to people around the globe through social networking websites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and through microblogs.

I understand your frustration at having to keep up with citizen reporting. But that does not give you the right to so flagrantly distort facts and insult a mass of people that have devoted their own time without any monetary compensation to helping their brothers and sisters in Iran.

Next time, if you’re going to write on this subject, please, inform yourself about the many terms you used and try to show the real picture.

Iran: "What is This Opposition?" Right Answers to Wrong Questions

EA's Josh Shahryar offers this analysis, also published in The Huffington Post:

On Wednesday in The New York Times, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett attempted perhaps the most stinging dismissal of the importance of the ongoing opposition protests in Iran.

Bloggers and other foreign policy experts refuted many of the Leveretts' specific points, especially their overestimation of government-sponsored protests and underestimation of opposition demonstrations. [EA's immediate reaction is in Wednesday's updates.] I have covered the numbers on my blog, but a very good second opinion is offered by Daniel Drezner in ForeignPolicy.com.

Drezner and Kevin Sullivan of Real Clear Politics set a wider challenge, however, when they argue that, beyond the Leveretts' distortions, there are "good" analytical questions.

Those questions need a response, not necessarily because they are "good", but because if they are not addressed, the Leveretts may get away with a blatant attempt at skewing facts to hammer in their argument that President Barack Obama should forget about the possibility of regime change in Iran.

This is how the Leveretts set out their three queries:

Those who talk so confidently about an "opposition" in Iran as the vanguard for a new revolution should be made to answer three tough questions: First, what does this opposition want? Second, who leads it? Third, through what process will this opposition displace the government in Tehran? In the case of the 1979 revolutionaries, the answers to these questions were clear. They wanted to oust the American-backed regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and to replace it with an Islamic republic. Everyone knew who led the revolution: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who despite living in exile in Paris could mobilize huge crowds in Iran simply by sending cassette tapes into the country. While supporters disagreed about the revolution's long-term agenda, Khomeini's ideas were well known from his writings and public statements. After the shah's departure, Khomeini returned to Iran with a draft constitution for the new political order in hand. As a result, the basic structure of the Islamic Republic was set up remarkably quickly.

Let's see what ancient China has to offer before I add my assessment. Back in the olden days, this man traveled hundreds of miles to meet a Taoist sage somewhere in China. After the necessary greetings, he said, "I have come a long way to ask you something. What is the answer to the ultimate question in the universe?" The sage smiled and barked, "Well, that is not what you should be asking. You should ask: is there an answer to the ultimate question in the universe?"

In this parable, the first question posed by the Leveretts is fair: what does this opposition want?

Well, certainly not what Mir Hossein Mousavi wants. Even if we ignore the protesters' repeated calls for the freedom of detainees and other chants that call for help from Imam Hossein against tyranny, I think "Down with the Dictator" --- heard for the last six months, heard loudly and clearly --- is a slogan that embodies the demands. President Ahmadinejad Must Go.

In recent months, however, protesters have also widely started chanting against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The funeral of Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri was filled with noise denouncing the Supreme Leader. Ashura's protests days later were condemned by the regime for committing the same offense.

Certainly, Mousavi is still bargaining with the government. However, people on the street aren't ready to chicken out of their demands, even in the face of gunfire. If the government hadn't forcefully stopped them from presenting their demands through the media, you would have already seen that clearly.

The second question of the Leveretts is one the Taoist sage would have barked at: Who leads it?

The two questioners attempt to fool us into believing that their enquiry is fair by paralleling it with the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Revolutions need leaders and the current protesters don't have one --- quod erat demonstrandum, this is not a revolution.

The first assumption is not true, however: it is not a prerequisite for revolutions to have leaders. Consider the February Revolution of 1917 that overthrew Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. Academics are generally in agreement that it was without what we today consider a definite and centralized leadership. Almost a century later, if you envisage scattered activists working together to bring people out to protest, then Iran has no shortage of those. Mousavi, often considered the de-facto "leader" of the current protesters -- didn't even sanction or support protests that were joined by hundreds of thousands in Ashura.

The third question of the Leveretts made me smirk because it has no immediate relevance: through what process will this opposition displace the government in Tehran?

Well, I wish I knew. But just because the protesters' demands have not been met yet, does not mean that we need to figure how they are going to achieve them. That is their task, a quest for which they've been coming out onto the streets of Iran, chanting as loud as they can, getting arrested, and spilling blood for the past six months to show their commitment to achieving those demands.

Who knows what might overthrow the regime? Maybe the Islamic Republic of Iran Army (Artesh) will finally step in. Maybe millions will turn up and storm Khamenei and Ahmadinejad's house and the parliament. Maybe the violence will get so rampant that the leaders of Iran will simply board a plane to Moscow and flee. This we don't know.

But we do know that simply because they have not met their goals yet, does not mean they won't in the future. The Leveretts' attempt to parallel this movement with the Revolution of 1979 tries to force us into believing that we need to know how, but we really don't.

When the change happens, we will know. Until then, all we can do is support the opposition because they're not just fighting for political rights, but for their human rights. If President Obama believes the Leveretts and discounts the power of the Green Movement, he risks making enemies of the open and secular Iran of the future, just like Jimmy Carter did when he discounted the Revolution of 1979. (Not to mention the fact that he would be guilty of legitimizing an illegitimate regime.)

The Leveretts' piece made me really grateful to an old professor of mine, Dr. Rick Schubert, bless him. Dr. Schubert gave me a D in Philosophy 101, but he taught me what now has become my Golden Rule: questions are equally as important as the answer to them, so be careful before you ask. Maybe the Leveretts should attend one of his classes.

Today on EA (7 January 2010)

Iran: We've caught up with all the latest news this evening on our LiveBlog.

Josh Shahryar lets loose his frustrations at Will Heaven: "Next time, if you’re going to write on this subject, please, inform yourself about the many terms you used and try to show the real picture." Scott Lucas offers another perspective with a tribute to the bravery of two Iranian Twitterers no longer with us.

Videos from last night's international football game between Singapore and Iran are posted in a special section. Iranian State TV reportedly cut the soundtrack to block the sound of the very political, pro-green, chants being heard throughout the stadium.

Israel/Palestine: EA's Ali Yenidunya analyses the various statements and asks whether change could be in the air over the peace talks.

Israel: We report on an article in today's Jerusalem Post which compares and contrasts the current Prime Minister  Netanyahu with former PM Ariel Sharon.

Gaza: Following a call from Hamas rulers on Wednesday, protesting at the delay of an international aid convoy, a policeman has died and many activists have been injured following clashes between them and Egyptian forces.