The heavy crowd in the Iranian streets frightens the West. Its media do not talk about it or if they do it is only to tie it to Moussavi. However what happened during those 5 days is a real breakdown.

Monday June 15th | The crowd was in the street : 60 times larger than the mobilization capacity of the regime. A watchword for a general strike for Tuesday has been launched ; the regime was afraid and brought into play militia groups and machine guns. Several protesters were hit including a pregnant woman.
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People were in a mad rage and attacked the nearby militia head quarter and occupied it after 2 days of siege.
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Tuesday 16 June | Moussavi stills absent. According to the Islamic Republic daily, he is received by the Supreme Leader because the crowd of protestors held a march to the Haft-e Tir Place (June 28 Place), whose name refers to a bomb that destroyed the headquarters of the Islamic Republican Party on June 28th 1980.

The regime panic and forbids journalists to cover the event. In Tehran, the night is hot, same in other cities...

Mousavi calls for demobilization !

Wednesday June 17 | the appeal did not hold over the autonomous movement. The crowd is larger than previous ones in a new silent march where now we do not see much green ribbons of Mousavi supporters. Then we obtained the number of killed from a group of former soldiers who have maintained contact with colleagues after the revolution. It is damning : 249 killed. On behalf of the regime, Mousavi tries to calm things down : he appeals Iranians to dress in black and bring candles with them to gather in mosques in memory of the only 7 dead accepted by the regime. Mousavi hoped to break down the daily protest of the autonomous movement. The crowd disobeyed.

Thursday June 18 | Instead of going to the mosques, the crowd surrounds the Place of arms (Toupkhaneh) where 100 years earlier Iranians hanged a fundamentalist mullah who inspired Khomeini. The crowd also forgot to dress in black and light candles for snivelling. Demonstrators carry signs on which can be red : "we are ready to die” and 100,000 people all sing the national anthem banned by Khomeini on a place that now bears his name.

In order to not lose the face, Mousavi meets the crowd and gives a speech on the roof of his car, but it goes away without appeal for a new call for demobilization since he now follows autonomous protestors. When he leaves the place, like many others he does not know the plans of invisible leaders of these demonstrations. Their call for the next protest is broadcast on the web around 6 am the next day : Come on Friday, June 19 at the same place as yesterday and Saturday 16 pm on the Revolution square.

Friday June 19 | Mousavi is defeated : the crowd reinvests this square near the bazaar without the puppet leader of the movement can react in time to appropriate the movement. Given the very small number of green ribbons, the regime put Mousavi out to pasture and this is the other so-called moderate, Karroubi which takes over the call for protestations in his favour on Saturday 16 pm on the Revolution square.

In parallel, the system evokes the rallying of several old ayatollahs to the protest and Westerner journalists relayed this so-called news ! After assigning the paternity of the autonomous protest to Mousavi, we now have to fight against this new rumour that intends to connect this crowd to the regime.

What is the logic of this disinformation ? This crowd that does not follow the guidelines of the so-called moderate figures or that shouted "death to the Islamic republic" is the proof of the illegitimacy of the regime.

This massive presence abolishes all existing contracts between the West and the mullahs. By asserting that this protestation is not hostile to the regime, Europe seeks to isolate the movement and hopes it will run out of steam. Total (Oil Company headquartered in Paris) has even asked the regime to provide troops to guard its offices. This is stupid, angry Iranians could be confused with one of the militia bases.

The regime is much less optimistic, that is why it called upon reinforcements from all the old mullahs portrayed as dissidents to obfuscate the truth. He also changed the composition of the guests of the Friday prayer usually composed of schoolchildren, soldiers and bazaaris.
Yesterday to make his speech, Khameney had used 3.000 mullahs who arrived from Qom by foot ! The regime does not have confidence in public transporters which have joined the autonomous movement, nor in young army recruits and even less in the bazaaris.

Even if Amnesty tempers the number of killed, even if the press avoid showing pictures of the clashes, the autonomous movement of Iranians is not about to falter and given the incredible imagination of the leaders, we are looking forward to the slogans they will reserve to the old crooked mullah Karroubi.

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The french version of this article :
 Iran-Contestation : Un mouvement autonome attaché aux symboles
 (20 JUIN 2009)