Iran Uses Force Against Protests as Region Erupts (NYT)
The unrest was an acute embarrassment for Iranian leaders, who had sought to portray the toppling of two secular rulers, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, as a triumph of popular support for Islam in the Arab world.
Iranian demonstrators portrayed the Arab insurrections as a different kind of triumph. “Mubarak, Ben Ali, now it’s time for Sayyid Ali!” Iranian protesters chanted in Persian on videos posted online that appeared to be from Tehran, referring to the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The authorities had made no secret of their resolve to stop the demonstrators. “The conspirators are nothing but corpses,” Hossein Hamadani, a top commander of the Revolutionary Guards, said last week in comments published by the official IRNA news agency. “Any incitement will be dealt with severely.”