My last blog seems to have attracted an incredible amount of attention, and, as often happens, I have been given more credit than is absolutely necessary.  I printed an email from an Iranian I consider a very good source, to the effect that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had been taken to the hospital, and was in a coma.  I pointed out that it was easy to be wrong on such stories, and that in fact I had wrongly believed that Khamenei had died a couple of years ago.  But I thought the source was good and I passed on his/her information.

A day later, I added an update about a bulletin issued by the opposition movement, The Green Path of Hope, which said that there were many rumors in the Tehran Bazaar saying that Khamenei had died, that the Bazaaris were planning to shut down the next day, and that there was an unusual atmosphere in the streets of Tehran.

By now, you can read all over the net that I was the source of the rumors about the death of the supreme leader, and it follows that I effectively shut down the Tehran Bazaar! That explains the headline at the top.  Frankly, I don’t think my blog is all that powerful.

In fact, I have never claimed to know anything about Khamenei’s death, and I still don’t know anything.  I hope to know something in the next few days, and you will probably know it when I do;  one way or another the facts have to come out, if only to calm the agitated spirits all over Iran.  People are apparently very nervous.  Not only was the Bazaar closed, but there seems to be a run on staples, as people stock up against the possibility of unsettled times.

I would have expected someone at a high level of the regime to say something, but so far as I know, only the Iranian Embassy in Armenia has spoken up, calling the reports (including mine) nonsense.  This produced an overstated headline from Fox News:  “Iran Blasts Back at Rumors of Supreme Leader’s Death, News Site Reports.”  The story isn’t nearly so dramatic.

The other “official” reaction came from an interesting source:  the web site Tabnak, which is close to Mohsen Reza’i, the former commander of the Revolutionary Guards and a failed candidate in the June presidential elections.  Tabnak predictably debunked my claim that Khamenei was in a coma, but then surprisingly translated the entire blog into Farsi.  So I asked some Iranian friends:  if they thought it was nonsense, why translate it all and put it up there?

Their answer was interesting.  They thought that the people at Tabnak believed I had it right, and they put it up in order to say “hey look at this!  The Americans know our most secret secrets.”  In any event, today they took down the translation, leaving only the insults.  And, I’m told (as you know I don’t read Farsi),  they took the extraordinary step of removing the translation from the blog archives.

Was it too “hot”?  I don’t know.  Maybe some day I’ll find out.

This story has been floating around the net for the past day or so, but this report comes from a person who is in a position to know such things.  As I know very well (having been gulled into wrongly announcing Khamenei’s death a while back), it is easy to be misled, and Khamenei has had previous medical emergencies in the past, and recovered, but the source is excellent. Nonetheless, it’s always smart to apply the Reagan Caution:  Trust, but verify.  I’m doing my best.

Here is what he/she says:

Yesterday afternoon at 2.15PM local time, Khamenei collapsed and
was taken to his special clinic. Nobody – except his son and the
doctors – has since been allowed to get near him.
His official, but secret, status is: “in the hands of the gods”.

Reportedly this collapse is natural. Many would like him to move to his
afterlife but reportedly the collapse was not ‘externally induced’
[no poisioning]. The few insiders who know about the collapse see
this development “as a gift from the gods”.

His condition had already seriously deteriorated over the last
months, aggravated by his nervous condition due to [1] his
inability to solve the problems created by his manipulation of the
election results and the refusal of [a large part of] the
population to accept this, plus [2] his loss of religious authority
by means of the repeated condemnations of events by senior clerics

Reportedly the principal aims of Khamenei of the last couple of
weeks, if not months, were to ensure [1] a positive reputation as
his legacy and [2] the physical survival of his family members and
their wealth, reportedly now largely in Syria and in Turkey (remember the truck convoy of $8.5 billion in cash and gold that was seized by the Turks?).

Outlook is uncertain but speculation is – considering that he is in
coma since more than 24 hours – that he may not come out of his coma and/or that he may die very soon.

If he dies it is expected that immediately a bloody clash will
develop between the powers behind Rafsanjani, who will immediately
claim temporary religious authority and overall control, and the
powers behind Achmadinejad who will scramble in order to regain
control and ensure their survival.

UPDATE (Wednesday Oct 14th):  According to a bulletin from the Greens (Moussavi/Karroubi et al), there are widespread rumors in the Tehran Bazaar that Khamenei has died.  The Greens say they cannot confirm it, but that there is an “abnormal atmosphere” in the streets, which almost certainly means there are more security people than usual.

The bazaar will apparently be closed tomorrow, and perhaps Friday as well, pending developments.

Here’s yet another powerful video from Iran, this time from the Baha’i, who have long been singled out for special persecution.  There are lots and lots of these videos, as there are lots and lots of innocents being hung, shot, tortured and stoned to death by the butchers who rule that unhappy country.

Every time I watch one of these, I am reminded again of Martin Luther King Jr.’s great line, that when it is all over, we will remember the silence of our friends more than the actions of our enemies.  And so I marvel at the leaders of the West, who with rare exceptions remain silent, and who have become accomplices to evil.

Which is why I wrote Accomplice to Evil, now in the bookstores that will admit to having it…

Laurent Murawiec died a couple of days ago, and his funeral was held this morning in the same cemetery in the Maryland countryside outside Washington where my parents’ bodies are buried.  A surprisingly large turnout, I thought–Laurent was not a ‘famous’ person by Washington standards–and a very nice rabbi.  His brothers flew in from Paris.  His parents, however, were not up to the trip.

Laurent was one of the bravest and most brilliant intellectuals of his generation.  I have no doubt that his work will be studied for a very long time, and in a just world he would have been honored and acclaimed by all those who care about the advance of understanding.  His slim volume, The Mind of Jihad, is hands down the best book on the subject, and his book on Saudi Arabia, Princes of Darkness;  the Saudi Assault on the West, produced an international reaction so intense that it at once made him a controversial figure and a target of the powerful Saudi lobby, as well as a valued expert among the best strategic thinkers in America and Europe.

Today’s eulogies stressed Laurent’s inquisitiveness, his vast knowledge, his independence of spirit, and the elegance of his work.  All true.  But I think they missed the most important thing about him, which is also the thing most pundits miss about great minds:  the playfulness of his mind.  Laurent loved puns, adored jokes, and delighted in juggling apparently contradictory themes and ideas in order to rearrange them into a new, coherent understanding of our world.  In his last weeks, although he suffered a lot from a terrible combination of infections and cancer, he never stopped laughing.  Just as his playfulness and wit got him to a level of understanding far beyond anything most of his contemporaries achieved, it also enabled him to fight against his doom with a vigor that confirmed his creativity.

Laurent’s combination of courage, wit and creativity reminds me of another friend, our neighbor up the street Charles Krauthammer.  I am given to understand that Charles endures considerable pain, and yet his cheerfulness brightens our neighborhood.  Like Laurent, Charles loves humor and adores playing;  he’s a talented chess player.  All of which confirms my belief that original thinkers are playful.

Which is not to say that all great game players are original thinkers.  I spend a good deal of time playing competitive bridge, and it’s very hard to find a bridge champion who also excels at some other enterprise.  There are exceptions, but they are very rare indeed–such as Pierre Chemla, a great French classicist who won several international championships at the bridge table.  And there are some celebrated businessmen who have done very well, too.  But almost all the great bridge champions were just bridge players, as almost all the great chess masters were just chess players.

But I insist that most of the great thinkers were, and are, playful.  And Laurent Murawiec was one of the most playful of them all.

Which is why his passing is a double loss.  We are deprived of both his genius and his sparkling, playful humor.

The failure to win the Olympic Games is the result of a  combination of sex, lies,  and an intelligence failure.  So I oiled up the ouija board and, after three failed efforts, contacted my old friend, the late James Jesus Angleton, the legendary former chief of CIA counterintelligence.  I mean, who better to analyze the fascinating events leading to the Copenhagen fiasco?

JJA: Sorry, I was sleeping.  Didn’t hear your earlier calls.

ML: It’s hard for me to figure out what time it is where you are…

JJA: Hard for me, too, frankly.  How do you measure the passage of time in eternity?  We don’t have very organized schedules.

ML: Either do I.

JJA: Hah!  But that’s different.  You’ll see.  So what’s up?

ML: The big news around here is that “Chicago” was dissed by the International Olympic Committee in Copenhagen.  Most people assumed that President Obama wouldn’t have gone there unless he believed we were going to win .  Then, after Chicago was thrown out in the first round, a lot of people started to say that he knew it was going to be tough, and only went because he thought his personal charm would turn it around.

JJA: Before the results were in, it sure sounded as if the folks in the White House thought it was in the bag for Chicago, didn’t it?

ML: It did, but then they might have been trying to put the best face on a tough situation.

JJA: To be sure, to be sure.  However, if you were a counterintelligence person you’d look at it differently.

ML: No doubt I would.  But then, I’d look at the handsome guy in the mirror differently, too.

JJA: Very droll.  But let’s look at how these bids are won, shall we?  There’s a very big committee, more than a hundred strong, and a smaller executive committee.  These are the players, they make the decisions.  They’re like a government or a big corporation, let’s say.  If you want such an organization to award you a contract, how do you go about it?

ML: I lobby.

JJA: Yes, you lobby.  And you corrupt, too.  You do favors, you promise even more favors if you win, and in short you do the same things that an intelligence service’s case officer does when he recruits agents.  This process is well known in Chicago.

ML: No kidding!

JJA: I don’t kid.  This is serious stuff.  So let’s assume that, one way or another, the Chicago committee (call it CC for short) was on good terms with many of the decision-makers on the IOC.

ML: No doubt.

JJA: OK.  I can easily imagine one of these gentlemen (there are very few women on the IOC) telling one of the CC people, “we need to sweeten the pot, if you’ll put up another bit of money, it’ll be in the bag.”  And I can imagine the CC sweetening the pot, and the gentleman in question assuring them it was now in the bag.

ML: And on that basis, the president would fly to Copenhagen to get the credit.

JJA: Even as any of us would.  Except someone who knew enough to understand the temptations to which the IOC guys were being subjected.

ML: Such as?

I suppose it’s a tribute to the president’s tenacity, or perhaps his inability to think outside the box of conventional wisdom, but he seems to be totally unwilling to accept a Divine gift.

He’s facing some terrible foreign policy decisions, decisions he doesn’t want to make, and he’s right to want to avoid them, because whichever way he tilts, it’s going to be bad for him.  Take Afghanistan.  McChrystal and Petreus have told him that if he doesn’t go all in, to the tune of forty thousand or so additional American fighters, he’s likely to see the war there go into the tank.  Those generals are outstanding leaders and analysts, and if they say that, it’s probably true.  On the other hand, President Obama is probably being told by his political brain trust that, if he antes up the forty thousand, there will be anger from his left (his solid base), while if he doesn’t provide the new troops, and bails out, there will be anger from mainstream Americans.

Remember your Patton:  “The American people hate a loser.”

So either way, the president is likely to alienate a considerable number of voters.  Which, needless to say, displeases him.

Take Iran.  The Islamic Republic is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism (or whatever I’m supposed to call it in Newspeak), is directly and indirectly killing Americans most every day in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is working on atomic bombs.  Most of the time, he seems to think that the first two are “management” issues;  it’s a variation of law enforcement.  But he’s made it clear for quite some time that he is determined to prevent Iran from building its own nukes.  He’s said it so many times that one has a tendency to forget the many rhetorical changes:

–On April 6th, “Now, Iran’s leaders must choose whether they will try to build a weapon or build a better future for their people.”

–On June 4th, in Cairo, “…It is clear to all concerned that when it comes to nuclear weapons, we have reached a decisive point. This is not simply about America’s interests. It is about preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that could lead this region and the world down a hugely dangerous path.”

–On July 7th, in Moscow, “We should be united in opposing…Iran’s efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon.”

–On September 23rd, to the United Nations General Assembly, “We must embrace a new era of engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and our work must begin now.”

–On September 25th, in Pittsburgh at the G20 meeting, “Iran must comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions and make clear it is willing to meet its responsibilities as a member of the community of nations. … [T]he Iranian government must now demonstrate through deeds its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law.”

–On October 1st, in his press conference, he used both of his basic themes, the “outstretched hand” and the “time is up”:  “we’re not interested in talking for the sake of talking. If Iran does not take steps in the near future to live up to its obligations, then the United States will not continue to negotiate indefinitely, and we are prepared to move towards increased pressure. If Iran takes concrete steps and lives up to its obligations, there is a path towards a better relationship with the United States, increased integration with the international community, and a better future for all Iranians.”

He had previously given Iran a late September deadline, then let it slide to October 1st, and it has now been extended to an October 18th “followup meeting.”

It’s pretty obvious that Iran has no intention of abandoning its nuclear program.  Just look at the headlines in the official press: “Iran will not give up its right under any circumstances,” and “Excellent negotiations today.”

I have had trouble writing about the death of Irving Kristol.  He is one of those whose death is particularly hard to digest, because he was so full of life.  Blessed are those fortunate enough to have known him.

You will have read a great deal about Irving’s wisdom, of which he had a great abundance.  Not just smarts, but real wisdom, of a particularly Jewish sort, which was anchored to meaningful anecdotes.  Some of these were personal (when I wrote a book on Machiavelli he told me about a Tuscan farmhand who crossed himself when Irving asked for directions to the Machiavelli estate), others were drawn from history or from others’ experiences.  Each illuminated the point he was trying to make, or–for this too was a very important part of his wisdom–not make.  You see, Irving was one of those rare important people who was always willing to admit that he did not know the answer to some tough question.

There is a Jewish law, or perhaps regulation, called Lashon Harah, which forbids telling nasty tales about others.  It’s a very annoying restriction, especially in a place like Washington where gossip, especially “juicy” (that is, damning) gossip is the common currency.  None of us lives up to it, and I sometimes think that the only people who can possibly fulfill the law is someone who lives in a cave, or maybe in a very small town populated with saintly people.

Of all the people I have known, Irving is perhaps the only one who seemed to me to fulfill the requirements of Lashon Harah. I cannot ever remember him saying anything nasty about anyone.  Every now and then he would laugh out loud when someone’s name came up in conversation, and I suppose you might have interpreted that laughter as criticism, but there was never any sign of nastiness, let alone the intense bitterness that characterizes so much of life here.

In short, he was the nicest person I’ve ever met.  Incredible.  So yes, his ideas were important, and certainly the help he gave to young people was memorable and wonderful, but the emptiness I feel these days is because I know I will not hear that laughter, or see those twinkling eyes, or feel the uplifting of the spirit that always came from being near him.

Today they hung Tommy Lasorda in the National Portrait Gallery, and if you can believe it, the portrait is bigger than he is.  It was a wonderful event for a wonderful guy, who is a true American hero and one of our most inspirational leaders.

This was a totally non-Washington event.  Admiral Mullen (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for those of you in Rio Linda), a personal friend (Tommy went to Iraq with him, an event that almost brought Tommy, recalling it, to tears), was there, but for the most part it was Italians from Pennsylvania (family mostly) and baseball people, including the commissioner.

During the tributes to Tommy, one of his most famous slogans was quoted, and it’s so good we should all memorize it:

There are three kinds of people.

Those who make things happen;

Those who watch things happen;

And those who wonder what happened.

Tonight we went to the ballgame with him, and I was reminded once again that just being with Tommy Lasorda is a treat and an honor.  Even for a Yankee fan, ahem.

Marx would have delighted in the events of the 18th, all over Iran.  Groucho, that is, for on the 18th the supreme leader and all his co-conspirators were transformed from figures of awe to objects of ridicule.  As Machiavelli likes to remind us, the most dangerous thing for any leader is to earn the contempt of his followers, and the Iranian people made it luminously clear that they would no longer be intimidated.  The regime had launched a vicious repression following the challenges to the “election results” of June 12th.  For a hundred days they had killed, raped, tortured and threatened.  In the runup to the 18th, the stern face of the leader of the Revolutionary Guards had appeared on television and his confident voice had been heard on the radio, warning that anyone who dared wear green, or carry protest signs, or chant criticism of the Islamic Republic, would be treated “very harshly.”  His words were like so much spittle in a storm; among the many chants in the streets that day, you could hear “rape, murder and torture will not silence us.”

When a tyrannical regime dies, you can see the symptoms in the little things.  Late Friday afternoon, after millions (yes, millions–this according to Le Monde, France 2, and L’Express, with the BBC saying that the demonstrations were bigger than those at the time of the Revolution) of Greens mobbed the streets and squares of more than thirty towns and cities to call for the end of the regime, there was a soccer game in Azadi Stadium in Tehran.  It holds about a hundred thousand fans, and it was full of men wearing green and carrying green balloons.  When state-run tv saw what was happening, the color was drained from the broadcast, and viewers saw the game in black and white.  And when the fans began to chant “Death to the Dictator,” “Death to Russia,” and “Death to Putin, Chavez and Nasrallah, enemies of Iran,” the sound was shut off.  So the game turned into a silent movie.

But the censors forgot about the radio, and the microphones stayed open, so that millions of listeners could hear the sounds of the revolution.  And in Azadi Stadium, as in most parts of the country, the security officers either walked away or joined the party.

You will not have heard such stories, nor read about them in our “media,”  which have raised denial of the day’s major events to an art form of late.  Rather like the Iranian regime, which used to have an enormous influence on the way citizens thought, the major broadcasters and dead-tree scribblers have also become objects of ridicule.  On Sunday morning, Supreme Leader Khamenei proclaimed that the demonstrations had been an enormous success for the regime, but anyone looking at the pictures could see that he was short on sleep.  So would you if you had heard the thunderous shouts of “Death to the Dictator” during the night.  Khamenei’s claim was greeted with ridicule.

Sunday also brought open contempt from some of the most revered leaders of the Shi’ite world.  Khamene’i had declared Sunday the end of Ramadan, a day of feasts and prayers, one of the most joyous of the Muslim year.  Such a proclamation is supposed to be canonical, for Khamene’i speaks in the name of all Muslims.  But fifteen Grand Ayatollahs like Sistani (from Najaf, Iraq), Montazeri, Taheri and Sanei rejected Khamenei’s reading of the moon, and said that the feast could not begin until Monday.  No one could get away with such an open challenge to the supreme leader’s theological authority unless there were a considerable consensus that his rule was illegitimate.  And it’s even worse for him:   across the country, many mosques were closed on Sunday.  The faithful were told to go home and fast, and come back the next day for prayer.

No wonder Khamenei looks tired.  And in keeping with the avalanche of errors, today the Revolutionary Guards’ favorite newspaper kept the whole thing going, insisting that the supreme leader was right after all.  Stupid and irrelevant, a classic example of people in a hole who keep digging deeper.

Here we go.  The best way to get a feel of the tempo of activity comes from Twitter, and here are some Tweets Thursday evening Washington time, about 5 hours before the scheduled start of demonstrations:

Bus loads of Basij & Ansar-Al-Hezb Allah just arrived in Tehran from Shoshtar. Others R expected.

IRGC has been assigned the special mission of protecting portraits of the SL of being defaced by people throwing paint at them

They arrested more than 20 family members of political figures now. They’re taking hostages w/o legal grounds

Mousavi met with Sharestani (rep of Grand Ayat Sistani) was informed Marjas will soon speak
[ML: This is enormously important, if true it prefigures open criticism of the regime by leading Shi’ite clerics throughout the region, not just in Iran.  That Sistani would send his top aide to see Mousavi is quite something]

Mousavi went to Qum Wed, had dinner w the Society of Theologian Teachers & Researchers also the Reform Ayts

Mehdi Hashemi (Rafs son) asking to be given air time on IRTV to answer the fabricated charges against him

Last Sat 200 employees of Khoramshar (S. IR) mass transit went on 1 day strike for non payment of their wages

IRGC (guards) issued statement warning any disturbance & riots during Qods day will be confronted by Sepah

Karoubi announcing Qods day 11AM Haft Tir. Anti filtering software can be downloaded from his site http://bit.ly/pXmOC

In addition to the assassination of the Assembly of Experts member (1750 GMT), it is reported that the Chief Prosecutor in Kurdestan has been shot.

Tomorrow’s march routes for Mashhad and for Rasht have been posted.

In the latest of a series of assassinations in the province, the Kurdistan representative on the Assembly of Experts was killed today.

From an Iranian blogger in Tehran:  “People will come out but many are also leaving Tehran as it is a long weekend. Saturday is half closed and Sunday is a holiday. Many who participated in previous demonstrations are leaving Tehran or have left already and many are much scared of what happened to their colleagues, friends and other citizens.”

And a final tweet:

Police preventing ppl from leaving Tabriz (NW Iran) fearing they will join marches in Tehran.

It seems that Rafsanjani has joined the call for a massive turnout.  He had traditionally led Friday prayers on Quds Day (celebrated tomorrow)–for twenty-five years!–but not this year.  Rafsanjani is always playing both ends against the middle, but his current play is significant, because he called for a protest against tyranny everywhere. The same words were used by Hasan Khomeini, the grandson of the Imam who came to Washington a few years ago.  On that occasion I asked him before a large audience, “what about freedom of religion?”  He gave an answer I had never heard before from a Muslim cleric:  “Absolutely, religion must be a free act,” he said, and then continued, “and so we must also have freedom of NO religion.”

Nobody I know really has anything approaching confidence in the size of the demonstrations, but we will know very soon.  Estimates range as high as 3 million in Tehran.  The Mousavi/Karroubi people are of course hoping for a very big turnout, and they have taken measures (within their limited capacity) to protect their supporters against armed attack.  Everyone expects considerable violence from the regime.

It’s significant that top regime leaders, such as the Kurdish representative on the Assembly of Experts, are being gunned down.  This is obviously in response to the wave of arrests of family members of the opposition leaders.  Mrs. Mousavi’s brother, for example, has been in Evin Prison in Tehran for three months, and subjected to harsh torture.

I am full of admiration for the dissidents, and furious and ashamed that my government is still unwilling to embrace their cause.  The dissidents face torture and death, but are unafraid.  My modern Chamberlains face nothing but the loss of the chance to sit down at a negotiating table with a group of monsters, but the Chamberlains are afraid to support freedom.  The Iranian dissidents submit their bodies to torture and death, while the Chamberlains withhold their voices.

And so they have become accomplices to evil.

UPDATE:  In case you thought the Iranians had lost their wit, as the sun rose in Tehran, this tweet appeared: ” OMG they have sun in Iran? They forgot to filter the sun ?”

UPDATE FRIDAY MORNING (WASHINGTON TIME):  Have a look at the New York Times’ blog .  It contains other links, as to the Guardian’s always very good coverage of Iranian events.  When Ahmadinejad was being interviewed, he got flustered by the chants of the protesters.

It’s fascinating to see the intersection of historical and contemporary events, don’t you think?  Ahmadinejad drools on about the “myth of the Holocaust,” while hundreds of thousands of people march, chanting that they will only risk their lives for their own country, not in a crusade against the Jews.  And, elsewhere, Obama seems not to have known that his rushed announcement on yanking the missile shield, came on the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland.

UPDATE:  If you’d rather follow it in French, this seems like a good live blog.  Among other things, you’ll learn that the French Government has condemned the violence used against the demonstrators.

I haven’t heard one word about all this on the morning radio talk shows.

UPDATE:  Reuters now says that Mousavi, Karroubi and Khatami were all attacked when they joined the demonstrations, and were forced to leave.  Reuters is not very reliable IMO.  Haven’t seen anything about Rafsanjani.

Obviously there are lots of arrests and physical clashes.  And it’s impossible to get an accurate picture from the available fragments.  We’ll have better info in a few hours.

UPDATE:  Hah!  The “Green Wave TV Channel” is on the air.  Lots of videos.  No, I don’t know if they are really from today.  Probably most of them are.

UPDATE:  8:39 Washington time.  Tear gas around the University.  And just read a tweet in French saying there are 2-3 million demonstrators.

The regime supporters yell “Death to israel!” and the Greens chant back “Death to Russia!”

UPDATE:  Le Monde, L’Ezpress and France 2 are announcing “millions” of demonstrators, says a tweet.  Maybe Sazegara was right, he predicted 3 million in Tehran.

08:55 AM:  a tweet:  IRNA: Mohsen Ezjei is quoted saying that “the enemies of the system is threatening to overthrow it”

I’m gonna take Thurber the Airedale for a walk.

09:21 Tweet:  Anouncer said Karroubi himself said “Death to dictator” through bull horn

If you want to follow the Tweets, go here

Mousavi in the streets.

Khaled Mashaal [Hamas leader] and Ramzan [leader of Islamic Jihad of Palestine] are also in Tehran to attend the Friday prayer led by Ahmadinezhad. They are hearing anti-Palestinian chants.

09:35  From IRanian friends:

At this very moment the police is acting on and near Revolution Square. From all corners demonstrators are trying to move toward Ahmadinezhad and his Palestinian friends at the Tehran University.

Here a few videos: