As Iran heads for a charade of an election next week to replace Ahmadinejad with another ultimately powerless president (from among a mullah-approved list of eight), in the city of Isfahan, the scene on Tuesday was reminiscent of the mass protests that followed the 2009 presidential election. Those protests were suppressed by a brutal regime crackdown– albeit perhaps not quite permanently:
The venue was the funeral of the dissident ayatollah Jalaledin Taheri Esfahani. EA WorldView reports:
People first start chanting O Son of Hasan [referring to the 12th Imam of Shias, Imam Mahdi] destroy the oppression and dictatorship. Afterward, they chant: The political prisoners MUST be freed.
At 1.10 in the video, people in the crowd shout: Ya Hussain, Mir Hussain. [A reference to 2009 presidential candidate Mir Hossein Musavi, who is under house arrest.]
At 1.35 in the video, they start chanting: death to the dictator. [A none-too-subtle reference to Supreme Leader Khamenei.]
May we see more like this.
