"JUST BE PATIENT, WE ARE TRYING TO HAVE A REVOLUTION"

Student Protests in Tehran Become Nightly Fights for Freedom (NEIL MacFARQUHAR, June 14, 2003, NY Times)

A large swath of central Tehran turned into a combat zone overnight with running battles between demonstrators denouncing Iran's Islamic government and vigilantes and riot police officers determined to drive them off the streets.

What started as a small student march against the issue of university privatization on Tuesday has snowballed into violent nightly protests by demonstrators from across the social spectrum demanding more social, economic and political freedom.

The protests on Friday night were the largest and most violent to date, erupting on the campus of Shaheed Beheshti University in northern Tehran and clogging the two major highways leading to the dormitories of Tehran University.

"This is civil disobedience," said a 45-year-old man beside his car on Chamron Highway, where demonstrators ignited tires and even trees along the road. "We are standing up against them. We are resisting and protesting against the regime." [...]

As the first bonfires were lit and the traffic started to snarl, one driver yelled at a man who climbed out of his car and tried to direct traffic around a bonfire.

"Just be patient, we are trying to have a revolution," the man answered.

One interesting contradiction that many, especially conservatives, manage to hold in their heads is that nazism, communism, islamicism, etc., are disastrous principles around which to organize a society, inherently doomed to failure, but that it has simultaneously been necessary for us to confront them militarily. We expect Iran will dispel this notion, collapsing from within, just as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union would have if given the chance. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 14, 2003 10:09 AM