Before I get started on this, seriously, what is up with the years ending in “9″?  I mean is that just the internationally designated “rise up against your autocratic government day” or what?  And if so, what the heck happened to 1999?

Here are the known, undisputed facts:  On Friday, June 12, Iran held its presidential elections.  Ahmadinejad was declared the victor with 63% of the vote.  After that, well, things started getting crazy.

In what was widely expected to be a very close election, Ahmadinejad was announced as having beaten his opponent by a ratio of more than 2-1.  Before the election results were announced mobile phone and SMS services were shut down, satellite TV was jammed, all non-state TV stations were shuttered, and large numbers of internet sites were blocked and/or subjected to DNS attacks.  All pretty standard precursors to some sort of shenanigans on the part of the ruling party.

Well, judging from the reaction of the people of Iran, these shenanigans didn’t go over so well.  Massive protests started pretty much immediately.  The reform candidate, Mousavi, was placed under house arrest.  Riot police and Basiji (religious police) started knocking heads.  But it turns out the people didn’t really appreciate this too much.  The protests gained steam.  The government responded by mixing spectacle (witness the staged pro-Ahmadinejad rally) with increasing brutality.  Tehran University was raided, students and demonstrators were killed, and lots and lots of people got arrested and/or beaten.  Ayatollah Khamenei announced several times that the results were correct and everything was fine.

Nobody listened.

Using foreign IP addresses and Twitter, the protestors and demonstrators have continued to fight back against government censorship and electoral fraud.  The rallying of the people over the relatively few numbers of confirmed deaths really, really reminds me of America’s historical cry of “13 dead on the Lexington green!”.   I’m not sure why, I just get the same vibe from both.

Like the post title says, there are similarities here to both the 1989 Tianamen Square massacre and the 1979 Islamic Revolution.  In China, the government “won” by staying in power, but was forced to radically change the countries economy into a raging free market mode in order to raise the people’s stadard of living.  In Iran the government lost, there were post revolution purges, and the entire society was remade.

Initially, this was a straight Tianamen protest.  People were unhappy about the state of the economy and how the leadership was impacting their lives.  They wanted something better, voted for it, and really, really didn’t appreciate the way the rug was yanked out from underneath them.  But as the protests have continued, they are assuming a more and more revolutionary feel.  The government hasn’t pulled its head out and said “oh, crap, we messed up, here, have your leader and we’ll go on doing our thing behind the scenes like normal.”

Instead, the government has pretty much done exactly what is needed to spark this sort of angry dissatisfaction into revolution: they’ve applied enough force to really, really motivate and tick people off, but not enough to send them running back to their homes in terror.  See, that’s the tricky part about running an authoritarian regime with a sheen of credibility on it.  It’s hard to keep everything in balance.

In some ways, it’s kind of like a dog that’s been starved in a cage.  As long as no food comes in front of it, the dog will be miserable and lie there.  But drop a steak in front of it outside the cage, and it’ll go nuts.  In this case, the Iranian people saw their steak, then the Supreme Leader yanked it away and went “na-na-na-na-na-na”.  For future reference to those of you who keep starving dogs in cages, this is a very bad idea.  Don’t do it.  Srsly.  Just don’t.

So anyway, that’s basically what’s happened so far as I can tell from twitterinjs, blog aggregations, and the very small amount of media coverage this situation has been getting.  As I post this its midday Tuesday and hopefully most of Iran is on strike right now in support of elections that actually count.  Here’s hoping the spirit of 1776 pops up and helps give another tyrannical regime a good dose of people power in Iran.

Tags: achmadinejad, election, iran, islamic revolution, mousavi, tianamen square