iran unfiltered

['Letters from Tehran' is a new series on Iran Unfiltered.  In his periodic dispatches, our new Tehran correspondent will provide an important perspective and share his eyewitness account of important events unfolding on the ground in Iran.]

13 Aban

"The day itself started off quite calmly as far as I was concerned, I went to work early in the morning and there was nothing major going on. The mobile phones were working normally, the internet was up and running and the weather was superbly crisp and clean following the heavy rain the day before. There was, however, this tension in the air, as everyone was anxiously waiting to see what would happen, while I guess at the same time being a bit concerned that maybe nothing would happen and noone would show up on the streets. The day, however, developed differently than it started."

Read the rest after the jump.

"Around 10:00ish, when the first official protests were supposed to start, reports began coming in about scattered anti-regime demonstrations around the city and some clashes. The reports increased and as you [outside of Iran] probably know better than I at this stage, the demonstrations spread throughout the city, paralyzing traffic in many places and keeping the security forces very busy. The internet became unreliable as they starting closing the ports to stop people from uploading films, etc. and the mobile phone coverage became erratic and finally died.

I was in my office downtown (around the Takht-e Tavoos/Abbas-Abad area) having a meeting around 11:00 when I started hearing shouts of Allah-u Akbar from the street. Looking out, there were people scattered all over the place and at the intersection, a large gathering gained force, with people shouting slogans, many of them directed at Khamenei and moving slowly in one direction. Suddenly, they were attacked by the security forces on motorcycles, who fired teargas and hit people randomly. They re-grouped quickly (there were a lot of side-streets for them to flee into and then back out) and continued their defiance. The security forces, who had apparently come from the heavy clashes around the Hafte Tir Square area and had other priorities further south toward Mofatteh Street, left the scene, allowing people to re-group. A group of around 300 people began marching up the street, completely blocking traffic, shouting "Marg bar diktator" ["Death to the dictator"] and things like "Khamenei ghatel-e, velayatesh batel-e" ["Khamenei is a murder, his leadership is void"], in addition to "Death to Russia", "Death to China" etc. I guess you've also heard this one "Obama, Obama, ba oonayi ya ba ma?" ["Obama, Obama, are you with them or with us?"]. Notably, the taxi drivers and motorcyclists, who would have normally not had the least respect for pedestrians on the street, were all very cooperative, honked their horns rhythmically and fell behind the protestors, allowing them to walk slowly up the street.
 
This continued for about 25 minutes without any security interfering. All of a sudden however, a group of plain clothes individuals on motorcycles moved in to scatter the group. Notably, one young individual among the protestors, who we could see clearly due to his white sports jacket, turned out to be one of the security guys, and was coordinating the effort once his pals moved in. Also notable was that the people actually fought back quite aggressively, managing to beat up one of the plain clothes guys and cornering him to such an extent that he ultimately ripped off a car license plate in order to defend himself (he didn't have anything else on him it appeared). His colleagues, however, had pellet guns with which they shot directly at people. In this scuffle, they didn't manage to arrest anyone or take anyone away, and after about 20 minutes of back and forth, the people managed to chase them away with rocks and also by grabbing a couple of them and beating them up pretty badly. However, the momentum was gone and the protest fizzled out as people moved to different locations. You could still hear things going on in other parts of the city, with shots being fired (most likely teargas) and pillars of smoke hear and there.
 
What was very interesting was that people seemed less afraid this time that at many times before. They attacked the vigilantes, they shouted pretty harsh slogans against Khamenei even though they were relatively small in numbers and didn't really have any "strategic depth". The day, and not only the event I witnessed, showed that people are not tired of this process, they are not going to back off and they will use every regime-sponsored occassion to make life tough for the system. The night before, cries of Allah-u Akbar filled the air, with the same vigour and strength that had been witnessed at the height of the protests in June and July. People don't want to give up, but they are being forced to be more prudent and sofisticated in their protests. This will likely develop in interesting ways as the protestors get more creative. We have some important milestones coming up as well. There is 16 Azar (I guess it coincides with 6 or 7 December), Tasooa/Ashura on 26-27 December and most importantly, 22 Bahman in February. All of these, just like Ghods Day [in September], are events that can't be cancelled and you can't stop people from coming out on to the streets, so the regime is in an interesting catch-22."