Word: tehran
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...have been harmed. Today more than ever we need unity," said former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani during Friday prayers at Tehran University on July 17. It was a crucial sermon and, in the manner of many things Persian, purposefully and delicately opaque. Some thought Rafsanjani's speech was a direct threat to the Ahmadi-Khamenei regime. He demanded the release of political prisoners, an end to violence against protesters, the restoration of Iran's (intermittently) free press. Others thought Rafsanjani, speaking with the approval of the Supreme Leader, was trying to build a bridge between the opposition...
...many ways Iran, and in particular Tehran - the epicenter of over a month of protests triggered by the June 12 presidential election - has become an Orwellian police state. Security has particularly tightened in the past few weeks as the regime has attempted to root out the intellectuals, journalists, opposition leaders and political organizers who have been firing up dissent. "We haven't seen this kind of security in 30 years," says one office manager in northern Tehran, alluding to the days before the 1979 revolution when the country was ruled by the Shah and his much-feared secret police, SAVAK...
...know whom to trust nowadays in Tehran. Members of the feared Basij paramilitary roam the streets at night, often blending in with people lounging in parks or window-shopping at the capital's many squares. Locals are reluctant to discuss anything remotely political in public, let alone divulge their opinions. And looming over everything else is the constant paranoia of surveillance: on the Web, over the notoriously unreliable mobile networks, on the hectic, crowded streets, even at work...
...short the electrical grids by turning on all household appliances en masse; they boycott products advertised on state TV; and they increasingly turn to Twitter, blogs, Facebook, e-mail-distribution lists and underground newspapers to bring attention to the regime's brutal tactics. (Read "Which State Security Branch Rules Tehran's Streets...
That is mainly to try to avoid bumping up against the Basij, who rule the streets. The government has chosen to rely increasingly on the force, which some believe to number more than 100,000 in Tehran alone, though that statistic is impossible to confirm. In previous days, they were primarily shipped in on a temporary basis from the more conservative countryside to quash planned street demonstrations. But now they seem here to stay. They operate out of the city's mosques, from which they venture out to patrol the streets at all hours of the night on motorcycles, often...