The world is alight with news of Iran. The election, the demonstrations, the death, and the denial, have reached us in the western world in an unprecedented way. As the masses took to the streets in Tehran and the world was flooded with those images, I honestly believe that Ahmadinejad was shocked. Genuinely shocked. This wouldn’t have happened 15 years ago, hell, even 5 years ago it would have been a different story. Steal the election, or at the very least, grossly overstate your margin of win and move on. Protests? Sprinkle in some violence and fear and that will settle the masses, right? Not so much anymore because we are watching. The media blackout means nothing as anyone with a cell phone or a twitter account and an Internet connection can bring us along for the ride.
I’m sure there are those that would love to see Mousavi imprisoned, or even killed, but the days where that would be quietly possible are long passed. Whether or not he would have been the correct political choice is no longer even the question. Mousavi has become a martyr, a symbol of the fight for justice. People- young, old, professional and peasant- have taken to the streets to call bullshit. Even the outright threat of deadly retaliation by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, who renounces the demonstrations and backs the election results, has had little affect on the fervor of the Iranian people. I imagine Ahmadinejad is pissed because it wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
We in the west, we in the rest of the world, weren’t supposed to be watching.
