Rooftop Defiance Sets up Showdown (with video)
Jerome R. Corsi
June 19, 2009
 Scene from private video from Tehran that captures defiant rooftop shouts against Iranian regime |
Citizen-generated videos sent via the Internet from Iran show rooftop shouts tonight in Tehran of "Allahu Akbar," the same "Allah is great" chant Ayatollah Khomeini-inspired revolutionaries used in 1979 to overthrow the Shah.
The rooftop protest continued despite a speech by Ayatollah Khamenei at today's prayer services in Tehran in which the supreme leader declared incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the absolute victor in the presidential election and threatened serious consequences if street protests continued in support of reform candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who has disputed the results as fraudulent.
A showdown with protesters in which the regime may not hesitate to use severe violence is shaping up for tomorrow.
Posters on the social networking site Twitter indicated a key test of the regime's resolve to quell the widespread dissent will occur tomorrow with a rally called by Mousavi at 4 p.m. local time – a "green sea march" from Enghelab Square to Azadi Square in Tehran.
Video footage from Tehran is embedded below. It also can be seen here
Similar calls for rallies have led to a week of largely peaceful protests throughout Iran in which millions have marched wearing green, the color that came during the presidential campaign in Iran to symbolize Mousavi's reformist campaign to defeat Ahmadinejad, a religious Shi'ite Muslim radical who has repeatedly denied the Holocaust and called for Israel to be wiped from the map.
Many posts on Twitter have reported riot police and the Basij, a paramilitary group of civilian vigilante volunteers, have broken into homes to arrest residents who were going to the rooftops to shout out support of Mousavi.
Other posts on Twitter claim Mousavi and key members of his campaign staff have been arrested overnight.
Most foreign reporters have been expelled from Iran, making it difficult to obtain confirmation of the Twitter posts, including reports from purported Iranians who claim to be on scene in Tehran.
Iran expert Michael Ledeen of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies has called the crisis in Iran a "life or death showdown."
"After nightfall, millions of revolutionaries chant from their rooftops 'Allah is Great' and they are chants of defiance hurled at the Islamic Republic," Ledeen wrote. "I cannot imagine a soft landing."
Mousavi, now promoted in Iran as a reform candidate, is best known for his role as former prime minister of Iran from 1981 to 1989 in directing the country's disastrous eight-year war against Iraq in which millions of Iranians, including thousands of children, lost their lives in near-suicidal pitched battles.
Prior to the June 12 election, Ledeen claimed Mousavi was not a revolutionary, but "a leader who has been made into a revolutionary by a movement that grew up around him."
"The real revolutionary is his wife, Zahra Rahnavard," Ledeen said. "And the real question, the key question in all of this, is: why did Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei permit her to become such a charismatic figure?"
Under increasing pressure to support the protestors openly, President Obama commented today that "the world is watching" the Iranian protests, signaling a mild statement of rebuke to Khamenei's thinly veiled threat to use violence to stop further street protests that have involved millions of Iranians.
The House of Representatives passed 405-1 a strongly worded non-binding resolution expressing support "for all Iranian citizens who embrace the values of freedom, human rights, civil liberties, and the rule of law."
Recalling the fundamental freedoms articulated in documents such as the Declaration of Independence, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., took strong exception to Obama's reluctance to intervene directly in the Iran protests.
McCain told Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto that if he had been elected president, "I would say, 'We support the rights of all human beings especially those in Iran who want to disagree with their government and protest.'"
World Net Daily senior staff reporter and columnist Jerome R. Corsi has been in Israel the past three weeks researching an electronic book entitled, "Why Israel Can't Wait: The Coming War Between Israel and Iran," to be published by Simon & Schuster's Threshold Editions in August.