Iranian Election: It's Not Over Yet

No tanks in the streets yet, but at least a dozen dead protesters later, the opposition rally still far outnumbered the pro-government rally. Foreign reporters confined indoors and virtually all communication shut down, but the stories and the pictures still get out, somehow. Claims that Iranian police and soldiers are holding back from attacking their countrymen appear to be true, as several Revolutionary Guard members have been arrested and foreign mercenaries seem to be doing most of the beating and killing.

This video, via huffpo's Iranian protest liveblog, sums up two days of protests.



At his liveblog, Andrew Sullivan has heart-rending and gut-wrenching video of protesters dying in the streets.

The NYT's The Lede has great ongoing coverage.

They all recommend Laura Secor's analysis in the New Yorker.

But it's Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money who nails it. I disagree that Iran 2009 is a replay of Tiananmen 1987, except in the sense of who is the truly dangerous character in the drama:

Tank Man was not the first person to stand up to the coercive power of the state. People defying other people holding guns has a long and distinguished history, from Napoleon forward. The survival of Tank Man and of every other such protester depends on a decision made by the state employee carrying the gun. What distinguishes the few moments near Tiananmen from the Odessa Steps, thus, is not the heroism of the protester, but rather the decision by the tank commander not to run Tank Man down, or to shoot him. The video has always been more compelling to me than the shot; the tank commander actively tries to carry out his job without running over tank man, and eventually decides to hold up an entire tank column while Tank Man clambers on to his vehicle.

I feel that I can understand why Tank Man risked his life to stand in front of the tank column. I have less of a sense of why the tank commander decided to stop. For all I know, Tank Man may have been Tank Commander's brother. Tank Commander may have been afraid that his superiors would have been pissed if he ran over a guy while cameras might be watching. He may not have wanted innocent blood on his hands, or on the treads of his tank. He may have sympathized with the demonstrators; perhaps his father or mother had been a victim of the Cultural Revolution. Or perhaps he identified the Tiananmen demonstrators with the Cultural Revolution, and sympathized with them. I really have no idea.

The thing is, Tank Commander is far more dangerous than Tank Man. Tank Man can simply be shot; most seem to believe that Tank Man was later executed, far out of sight of the international media. The regime survives if Tank Man dies, even if the death of Tank Man isn't the optimal outcome. The regime dies, however, if Tank Commander refuses to run over Tank Man. Eisenstein used the Odessa Steps to demonstrate the corruption of the Czarist regime, but the regime didn't die until the soldiers refused to shoot the demonstrators. The successor regime didn't die until Boris Yeltsin climbed on a tank in August 1991. While there's some mystery as to the fate of Tank Man, I don't doubt that the CCP found Tank Commander and put a bullet in the back of his head at the first opportunity.

Read the whole thing.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....