Major Update! I mentioned below that we could see a tipping point in Iran if the general military forces took to defending the protestors from Ahmedinejad’s Basij thugs. Apparently this is starting to happen!

I’ve just been witnessing a confrontation, in dusk and into the night, between about 15,000 supporters of Ahmadinejad – supposedly the president of Iran – who are desperate to down the supporters of Mr Mousavi, who thinks he should be the president of Iran.

There were about 10,000 Mousavi men and women on the streets, with approximately 500 Iranian special forces, trying to keep them apart.

It was interesting that the special forces – who normally take the side of Ahmadinejad’s Basij militia – were there with clubs and sticks in their camouflage trousers and their purity white shirts and on this occasion the Iranian military kept them away from Mousavi’s men and women.

In fact at one point, Mousavi’s supporters were shouting ‘thank you, thank you’ to the soldiers.

One woman went up to the special forces men, who normally are very brutal with Mr Mousavi’s supporters, and said ‘can you protect us from the Basij?’ He said ‘with God’s help’.

This could easily be the end of the Iranian regime as we have known it almost three decades. (H/T Andrew Sullivan)

– end update

Start with The Anchoress today – one of her all time best posts.

The two opposing views as to who is in charge of the newly exposed military dictatorship. One view is the Revolutionary Guard has simply completed its 4 year plan to take control from the clerics. Another view is that the it is Khamenei who has wrest control from the clerics using the Revolutionary Guard.

One thing is for sure – no one knows how this will end. A force of peaceful revolution is rising up against jack-boot thugs who make Hitler’s SS goons look like Boy Scouts. How strong does the fire for freedom burn inside the Iranian people? Can they, by their shear numbers and will, destroy pure evil. An evil that is shocking the world with its exposed brutality:

As one of the shrinking group of international reporters in Tehran, I have found that gathering information about the public fury since the disputed presidential election is increasingly difficult and dangerous.

The menacing black-clad government enforcers – particularly the Basij militia, who wield chains and batons while riding motorbikes – want us all out.

The militia’s clashes with supporters of defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi can suddenly turn a peaceful demonstration into a battleground.

We cannot see what is happening, but as The Anchoress so elegantly demonstrates, we can peak in through Twitter and other bits of information drifting out. Iran’s government is on its heels, desperately trying to get control and hide the truth of its predicament from the world.

We will know soon enough which side will win out. If the thugs can be isolated and crushed, then a new Iran will rise from this fire. To me the key is the military. As this story notes, the Iranian military is very large compared to the Revolutionary Guard and their militia thugs:

Khamenei also picks the head of the armed forces – the 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guard and the 400,000-strong regular forces, plus 350,000 reservists.

The local police are probably another force that could tip the scales and bring Iran out of the darkness. With sufficient numbers of military and police units protecting the protestors this revolution could just happen.

Update: Some others agree with me, it is coming to a head:

It’s a matter of time. If Iranians continue to protest Sunday’s fraudulent “re-election” of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the man they call “the little dictator,” Tehran in 2009 will be a repeat of Beijing in 1989–a Persian Tiananmen Square. The Revolutionary Guard, who have consolidated their hold on Iranian power, will unleash their tanks while Basij vigilantes–the shock troops of the regime–defenestrate a few dozen people, as they have in previous uprisings (1999 and 2003), as a message to everyone else below.

Asd Reza Aslan argued in a clear-headed piece for the Daily Beast, “what we are witnessing in Iran is nothing less than a slow moving military coup against the clerical regime itself, led by Iran’s dreaded Revolutionary Guard, or Pasdaran, as the organization is called in Iran. The Pasdaran is a military-intelligence unit that acts independently from the official armed forces.”

If the attacks on their families, friends and neighbors continue or escalates, I can see the military stepping in against the government. People sometimes forget that military forces are made up of ordinary people who feel a duty to protect their communities and nation. And that includes protecting them from all threats, even those from within. It is a wild card yet to play out.

Update: Even the Liberals at Daily KOS are up in arms about the drivel coming from President Obama’s Administration.

Because if you really knew what was going on, how could you have your White House spokesperson deliver drivel like this:

“Obviously we continue to have concern about what we’ve seen. Obviously the Iranians are looking into this, as well,” Gibbs told reporters. “We continue to be heartened by the enthusiasm of young people in Iran.”

I’m sorry, sir. But.. W T F?

People are dying.  

Ahmadinejad’s Basij thugs, government police and imported Hizbollah fighters are roaming the streets with impunity beating and killing Mousavi supporters.

Make sure to read the comments. Obama really is screwing this one up. He has been measured, and has fallen way short. He is too tentative, to unsure. To inexperienced. My guess is he runs out of DC for to ‘get away from it all’.

Tags: Iran, Revolution