A best-selling author and critic of Islam says there's a real possibility that the protests against the recent election results in Iran could be the seeds of a new Iranian revolution.
On Friday Tehran residents climbed on to their roofs and began to shout "God is great!" and "Death to the Dictator!" in open defiance of Iran's supreme Islamic leader. The late-night cries came hours after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned opposition supporters to stop protesting the June 12 election that they say was rigged in favor of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The unrest continued on Saturday, when an estimated 3,000 marchers confronted a blockade of security forces in Tehran. Witnesses say police fired tear gas and water cannons, then chased down demonstrators with clubs, helped by volunteer militiamen on motorcycles. Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, says the Iranian government is clearly threatened by the continued street protests. "They feel that [Khamenei] has compromised himself by affirming the validity of Ahmadinejad's re-election," Spencer says, "and it looks as if there was election fraud on a wide scale, which implicates [Khamenei]. That's a very serious problem for the Iranian regime that can't really be minimized. "And so it is entirely within the realm of possibility that a movement that is simply protesting the presidential election results becomes something much greater." Spencer says it looks as if there are some real possibilities that could be happening now. Results from our related pollHow would you describe President Obama's response thus farto the political turmoil in Iran?
On Friday Tehran residents climbed on to their roofs and began to shout "God is great!" and "Death to the Dictator!" in open defiance of Iran's supreme Islamic leader. The late-night cries came hours after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned opposition supporters to stop protesting the June 12 election that they say was rigged in favor of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The unrest continued on Saturday, when an estimated 3,000 marchers confronted a blockade of security forces in Tehran. Witnesses say police fired tear gas and water cannons, then chased down demonstrators with clubs, helped by volunteer militiamen on motorcycles. Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, says the Iranian government is clearly threatened by the continued street protests. "They feel that [Khamenei] has compromised himself by affirming the validity of Ahmadinejad's re-election," Spencer says, "and it looks as if there was election fraud on a wide scale, which implicates [Khamenei]. That's a very serious problem for the Iranian regime that can't really be minimized. "And so it is entirely within the realm of possibility that a movement that is simply protesting the presidential election results becomes something much greater." Spencer says it looks as if there are some real possibilities that could be happening now.
Results from our related poll
How would you describe President Obama's response thus far
to the political turmoil in Iran?
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