Word: iran
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Twitter's strengths are also its weaknesses. The vast body of information about Iran circulating on Twitter is chaotic, subjective and totally unverifiable. But here's a measure of its new role in international politics: engineers delayed a planned network upgrade that would have taken the system down at the height of the protests after being asked to wait by the U.S. State Department...
...anti-dictator bullet, a medium so anarchic and distributed that it can't be stopped. It's not impervious; the Iranian government has already moved to limit access. But Twitter has done its work. The protesters know they aren't alone, and Ahmadinejad now faces judgment not only in Iran but also in the court of world opinion...
...shock troops again this time: members of the Basij, a pro-Ahmadinejad paramilitary group, stormed dormitories at Tehran University, reportedly killing five students and detaining hundreds. At least one demonstrator was killed when a Basiji opened fire on a crowd. There are eyewitness reports of deaths from clashes across Iran. Yet no matter what transpires--whether the government bows to the demands for change or launches a bloodier crackdown--Iran will never be the same. The election and its aftermath exposed the cynicism of the country's leaders but also revealed the determination of millions of Iranians to reach...
That people are now willing to risk their lives and take action shows that Iran has crossed a threshold. The nature of the demonstrations has reminded the state that people do, after all, care as much about democratic rights as they do about the economy. Ahmadinejad has done poorly on both counts, but as long as the state respected the vote, Iranians--who fought hard for the revolution that led to the creation of the Islamic Republic--were willing to overlook other shortcomings. Now that trust is gone. "This time they went too far," says Mohsen, a 32-year...
...along, Netanyahu has insisted that a different Middle East crisis, Iran's nuclear program, should be the focus of his relations with Washington. And though the Obama Administration resisted that argument, Netanyahu may now be getting help from an unexpected quarter: the Iranian regime, whose violent crackdown on peaceful protests against election-rigging have created a more pressing foreign-policy crisis for the Obama Administration. (See pictures of President Obama in Saudi Arabia...