“Massive, Massive” Police Presence Stops Protests in Iran

At least for today, protests were handily shut down. Since Saturday, the use of teargas seems to have been approved by authorities and is becoming common. The tension and the stakes keep getting higher, since I am sure some respected political and religious leaders will call for a nonviolent protest of mourning for those killed Saturday, a protest it will be difficult to oppose. The existing regime is trying to tie the hundreds of thousands, even millions cumulatively, of nonviolent protesters who have been on the streets at different times for 9 days now, to the small element that battles with police on a near-daily basis, labeling them “rioters.” Marching nonviolently in protest of the bogus election result is then labeled “enabling the rioters.” It’s unwise for that and other reasons for people in the street to engage in fighting with the security forces, because they seem more and more likely each day to have blanket permission to use deadly force. If you have members of the Revolutionary Guard, etc., and this has been widely reported, that are hesitant to attack their fellow citizens, it seems very dangerous to provoke them into a street fight. Anything like that is now going to be very one-sided.