Free Republic

Iran's pro-democracy movement, the Green Movement, was born in the tumultuous aftermath of presidential elections held on June 12, 2009. Although the results unambiguously declared incumbent candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the landslide victor, the majority of Iranians – including Ahmadinejad's opponents in the election, Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi found this outcome outrageously fraudulent, and took to the streets in protest. Some Iranian demonstrators were demanding reform while the majority were demanding a referendum to replace the regime with a democratic and perhaps secular one. Their umbrage became so widespread and well-known that they were soon identified as a serious...

The man accused of killing Neda Soltan has been identified as Abbas Kargar Javid, a pro-government militiaman, after photographs of the Basiji’s ID cards appeared on the internet. The identification challenges the Iranian regime’s claim that foreign agents shot the young woman, who became a global symbol of resistance to the Government of President Ahmadinejad. One picture appears on Mr Javid’s Basij identification card, which was taken off him by the crowd that stopped him briefly when he fled the murder scene during a massive demonstration against electoral fraud on June 20. Photographs of that card and another that was...

Budapest, 1956.Prague, 1968.Gdansk, 1981.Tianenmen Square, 1989.Tehran, 2009.  Each of these surprise flashpoints in history’s long march against totalitarianism proved as dazzling at its outset as it did hopeless at its extermination. Each of them left a trail of broken bodies, but the last was different than all its historical forebears in one way: the president of the United States kept silent while it was unfolding. Barack Obama, and the world, saw police beat and gas protesters and kill 27-year-old music students and nine-year-old children; and Iranian reports indicate that those arrested were viciously tortured in a secret prison. All the...