mir hossein moussavi

Imagine what would happen if Mir Hussein Moussavi disappeared into Evin prison this afternoon and then a few days later Mahmoud Ahmadinejad emerged to say that Moussavi, under the kind of harsh questioning necessary to protect the Islamic Republic from outside subversion, had confessed to being a paid agent of the CIA. Then imagine Ahmadinejad [...]

After two days of criticism that he should explicitly side with the Iranian opposition, President Obama yesterday said he was “deeply troubled” by the Iranian regime’s willingness to resort to violence, and while it’s “up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be,” he believes “the Iranian people and their voices should [...]

In the wake of the contested election and the surging rallies against Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs who rule Iran, prominent Republicans in the House and other conservatives want the president to make a firm statement.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) tweets:
The fraudulent Iranian election has mobilized opposition to the Mullah regime; the U.S. should back them, now’s the time for a regime change
Arrrrgggggh why am I screaming into the wind on this. Why not just announce that we’re going to convert them to Christianity? Do we want to undermine the opposition [...]

As if on cue from that last post, Scott Eric Kaufman recounts this recent conversation:

A former student of mine from Iran heard from his brother for the first time in a couple of days. When my student bemoaned the cautiousness of Obama administration’s statements, his brother confirmed one aspect of Spencer Ackerman’s account of the [...]

There’s a lot to agree with in my friend George Packer’s post about what’s happening in Iran. But I think George, who excels at intellectual history, might be missing a certain crucial component of the equation when viewing Obama’s actions here through the prism of realism vs. progressivism:
With riot police and armed militiamen beating and, [...]

The invaluable #iranelection Twitter hashtag sends along sends along this cameraphone-shot video of protests in the Iranian city of Tabriz. It looks edited to my non-expert eyes, but I pass it along anyway. (Watch after the jump.)

The Iranian regime is able to shut down access to e-mail (by limiting bandwidth), SMS and Facebook. Lots of protesters and would-be protesters are unable to make phone calls or otherwise communicate with each other, thereby limiting the ability of the opposition movement to gather strength. But the regime is unable to shut down Twitter, [...]

Very little is clear in the Iranian election, aside from the fact that the opposition does not credit for a moment the legitimacy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad winning more than 60 percent of the vote to Mir Hossein Moussavi’s 30 percent. Juan Cole has a sober and detailed post giving reasons to disbelieve the official results. [...]

If Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ends up winning re-election, not only will American conservatives suddenly rediscover the all-encompassing power of the Iranian presidency, but they’ll accuse liberals of being hypocrites for pointing out their hypocrisy, since liberals have been hoping against hope that Moussavi wins, and therefore they must have been writing that the Iranian [...]