Today is the holy day of Ashura in Islam.  It commemorates the martyrdom of Mohammed’s grandson Hussein and is particularly important to Shia muslims.  This year it also coincides with the seventh day of mourning for Ayatollah Montazeri.  Montazeri was scheduled to succed the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeni until he harshly criticized the regime for executing political prisoners in 1986.  Among other things Montazeri has done is to apologize to the U.S. for taking over the embassy in 1979 and issue several fatwahs against violence and suicide bombings.  From everything I’ve read about the man I think I would have liked to meet him.

Andrew Sullivan’s blog the Daily Dish has been an outstanding source of coverage on Iran and I encourage everyone to go read it.  Some highlights:

The hashtag #CN4Iran - designated by Chinese twitter users offering support to the Iranian uprising - is a trending topic on the twitter top 10  of trending topics. Ahead of Avatar, Singapore Idol, and Sezairi. Needless to say, twitter is blocked in China (though easy enough to get access to it).

Mousavi’s 20 year old nephew has been confirmed as being killed by the Basij (religous paramilitary police)

An Iranian opposition website said police forces refused orders to shoot at pro-reform protesters during clashes on Sunday in central Tehran, where it reported earlier four demonstraters had been killed. “Police forces are refusing their commanders’ orders to shoot at demonstrators in central Tehran … some of them try to shoot into air when pressured by their commanders,” the Jaras website said.

And of course, innumerable Youtube videos and camera phone pictures.

Iran has been on a slow boil ever since the regime falsified the June election results, mistakenly believing that the people only cared about the Islamic half of the name “Islamic Republic”.  Obviously, that was a mistake, as the Iranian people deeply care about both halves of that name.

As evinced by the Chinese twitter hashtag, the Iranian people are enjoying support from all corners of the world.  Pretty much everyone is inspired by their story - corrupt regime fakes election results, suppresses some protests, tries to go about its business, people say “um.. no.  Not only no, but HELL NO”.  Given the trend records of the current movement and the 1979 Revolution, its now highly unlikely that the current regime will be able to stay in power.

Last week protests broke out in the rural Iranian heartland and the city of Qom for the first time.  For Americans, the best equivalent would be rural Kansas farmers staging massive protests against Bush and the residents of Vatican City staging protests against an archbishop.

As noted above, this is the seventh day of mourning for Montazeri, there will be bigger protests on the 40th day of mourning.  Not to mention the upcoming seventh and fortieth days of mourning for Mousavi’s nephew.  This is largely how the 1979 revolution maintained momentum, at night, rooftop chants of “Allahu Akbar” shook the city, and during the day every cycle of mourning for martyrs led to the creation of more martyrs until the Shah was forced to flee.  With two such prominent martyrs already “in cycle” now, and the reported death toll of at least 12 people so far today, it’s becoming increasingly unlikely that the current Achmanidedouche/Khamenei government will see much past the anniversary of the June election results, because, should they still be in charge by that point, the protests that anniversary will bring out are pretty much going to dwarf everything we’ve seen so far.

As an American whose forebears (not forefathers, my family came over in the 1860’s) fought for the right to vote, it really brings me joy to watch another people across the world do the same.

Tags: #iranelection, andrew sullivan, iran, iranian revolution, montazeri, mousavi