Previously, when posting selected headlines, we published one selected headline per post. Iran News Now will be trying out a new format for our selected headlines over the next few days. Based on your feedback we may continue with this format moving forward. Basically, we will publish a daily list of selected [...]

NOTE: This is a live-blog article in which updates are being made in real-time as information comes in. To read this in chronological order, read from the bottom up.

Sadness to me is the happiest time
When a shining city rises from the ruins of my drunken mind
Those times when I’m silent and still as the earth,
The thunder of my roar is heard across the universe.
Rumi

It has now been almost six months since those fateful days in June when the people of Iran shattered the [...]

(Mowjcamp)
Hamid Dabashi
A rather peculiar reference to a prominent nineteenth century philosopher made Mir Hossein Mousavi’s letter to Ayatollah Montazeri of some urgent interest.
More than three months into the post-electoral crisis of June 2009, the chief oppositional candidate, who had cried foul soon after the officially declared victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had written a letter to [...]

(Radio Zamaneh)
Prominent Iranian reformist cleric, Ayatollah Hoseinali Montazeri criticized the role of Basij militia in the violent suppression of the post-election protesters and maintained the Basij was not established to serve “in the path of the Satan.”
In the post election events, Basij militia played an instrumental role in confronting protesters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s alleged fraudulent [...]

(Rooz Online)
November 20, 2009
By Ali Farokhi
Following the escalation of protests by Iran’s senior ayatollahs against the regime, some members of the Qom Seminary Teachers Association (the most important organization of clerics affiliated with the regime) are planning to present a new list of “grand ayatollahs” under the supervision of Mohammad Yazdi, Ahmad Jannati and Mesbah [...]

From Mowjcamp.com:
Ever since the fraudulent Presidential Elections in Iran in June 2009, the role of Shiite clerics from Qom and even Iraq in standing up to the coup government of Ahmadinejad and its backers has been unprecedented throughout the 30 year history of the Islamic Republic to say the least.

Indeed the positions held by senior [...]

On the surface, “order” has been enforced. But only on the surface. Inside Iran, public anger still burns, flaring up wherever opportunity presents. At the core of the Islamic regime, a struggle has been unleashed that — by stepping off his pedestal into the thick of the fray — the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has lost his once- undisputed power to bring under control. Far from subsiding, dissent is shaking the regime to its roots.

“In my estimate this is the strongest criticism ever of the supreme leader,” said Rasool Nafisi, a United States-based academic and Iran expert. “Although it doesn’t mention Ayatollah Khamenei by name, it is clear he is referring to him.”