(Corriere della Sera) | February 26, 2010
Mehdi Karroubi, 73-year-old cleric and politician, has become a leader of the protests against the Iranian regime. A disciple of Khomeini, since the age of 24 he fought at his side against the Shah (and paid with six years in prison) in order to create the Islamic Republic. Since [...]

Khordaad 88, February 2
Mir Hossein Mousavi ’s Interview with Kaleme
Kaleme reports that in this interview which took place close to February 11th [22 of Bahman], the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution, Mousavi stated that the main reason for the collapse of the dictatorial and unpopular regime of the Shah was its illegitimacy [in the [...]

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 [...]

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.

The tactics are unorganized, largely leaderless and only just beginning. They spread by e-mail, websites and word of mouth. But their variety and scope indicate that Iran’s uprising is not a passing phenomenon like the student protests of 1999, which were quickly quashed. This time, Iranians are rising above their fears. Although embryonic, today’s public resolve is reminiscent of civil disobedience in colonial India before independence or in the American Deep South in the 1960s.

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