Iran: Today’s Protest, Team Melli Solidarity, More Slogans, “Allahu Akbar” & More

1. Wednesday’s Protest Footage: BBC Persian is reporting that Iran’s provinces were relatively quiet today but that Tehran had yet another major protest and that it went without a hitch. See the footage here.

2. Thursday Protest Planned: Another large rally is planned for tomorrow.

3. Momentum and the 40-Day Mourning Cycles: So there is a lot of fear that the movement will lose momentum. Again, this is why history is important. During the Iranian Revolution, which was a movement that unfolded on the streets for more than a year, momentum was almost lost time and again. But the 40-day mourning rituals gave the opposition a specific excuse and date to re-launch demonstrations. And when more people died on those 40th day mourning periods, 40 days later, the opposition had another excuse to demonstrate. And with each 40th day demonstration, the protests grew and grew. The people that have died in the past couple days, can quite possibly give the opposition the same opportunity to re-launch protests if they should lose steam 38 or 39 days from now when they go to observe the 40-day mourning ritual.

4. The Rafsanjani-Khamenei Internal Power Struggle: al-Jazeera has a short but important video on the internal power struggle that was the impetus to tamper with the elections. See the video here.

5. “Allahu akbar”: At night, protesters reminiscent of 1978-79, are shouting “Allahu akbar” in solidarity with the movement. See the footage here.

6. Team Melli: Iran tied S. Korea 1-1 today. Their chances at making the World Cup look slim. 6 of the team’s players wore green wristbands in support of the protesters back in Iran (the game was in S. Korea). They were asked to take them off before the start of the 2nd half of the game. Team captain Mehdi Mahdavikia was the only one to keep his on the entire game. See the footage here. Read about it here.

7. Slogan from the Protesters: “NATARSIN, NALARZIN, MA HAMEH BA HAM HASTIM!!!” (“Don’t be scared, don’t tremble, we are all together” – It rhymes and sounds better in Persian, of course).