1968, all over again

Chip Cummins has an article in The Wall Street Journal about the situation in Iran:

Clashes between security services and demonstrators erupted again late Wednesday in central Tehran, even as state media said one unsuccessful presidential candidate dropped his objections to the 12 June elections, dealing a significant blow to the opposition's so-far united front.
Amid the domestic unrest, the worst since the Iranian revolution thirty years ago, Tehran scrambled to demonstrate its military might to the rest of the world. The Iranian air force said Wednesday it had successfully tested a new line of sophisticated bombs and radar-evading aircraft in a three-day exercise over the Persian Gulf. Defense Minister Brigadier General Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar told state media the Iranian military stood ready to repel any attack. "If anybody intends to intrude into the Islamic Republic, we will give them the most crushing response," he told reporters after a cabinet meeting Wednesday, according to state media. He cited Israeli "threats." The saber rattling carries historical overtones, harking back to 1980 when Iraq appeared to take advantage of the chaotic aftermath of the Iranian revolution to launch an invasion of Iran.
In Tehran, hundreds of protesters gathered in a square in front of Iran's parliament late Wednesday. Security services dispersed the crowd, beating them with batons, using water cannons and firing guns into the air, according to witnesses quoted by the Associated Press. Amateur video, said to be shot in the square on Wednesday, but impossible to verify, started trickling across the Internet late Wednesday.
One video showed protesters scattering through an intersection, throwing rocks near a fire. At one point, a bloodied young man was carried to a clearing, where helmeted emergency-services personnel appeared to provide assistance. Press TV, the Iranian state-controlled English-language news site, reported that 200 protesters gathered in front of parliament, but were quickly dispersed, and that "a heavy presence of police prevented violence in the area." But eyewitnesses told news outlets that security services had beaten protesters in an attempt to disperse them.
According to the Associated Press, Iranian state television showed some detained demonstrators, whose faces were blurred out, "confessing" they were incited by the BBC and Voice of America, and that demonstrators, not security forces, had used violence.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday said again that the government will restore and maintain order after a week of violent postelection demonstrations. Authorities have declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the victor.
"Neither the system nor the people will give in to pressures at any price," Mr. Khamenei told a meeting of senior parliamentarians, according to state TV. On Friday, Mr. Khamenei endorsed the vote in his strongest terms and ordered a halt to protests. The next day, security services cracked down on protesters, often dispersing them violently.
State media on Wednesday said that Mohsen Rezaie, one of three presidential candidates who had disputed the 12 June polls, was withdrawing his complaints to authorities. Mr. Rezaie, a former commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards military force, made waves when he entered the race. The hard-line conservative was seen as targeting Mr. Ahmadinejad's core constituency, challenging the incumbent by charging economic mismanagement and foreign-policy adventurism. But Mr. Rezaie garnered less than two percent of the vote, according to official results. He initially joined with former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi and reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi immediately after the vote in alleging widespread vote-rigging. The three candidates registered more than six hundred allegations of irregularities. But, on Wednesday, Mr. Rezaie was quoted as citing national security in dropping his complaint filed with the Guardian Council, a top clerical review board that oversees elections. He also said there was too little time to probe the complaints thoroughly. "The current political, social, and security situation has entered a sensitive and decisive phase, which is more important than the election," Mr. Rezaie said in a letter to the Guardian Council, according to state media. Mr. Khamenei has extended the time for the council to certify the polls until next week. Mr. Rezaie was the only one of the three unsuccessful candidates to attend a closely watched sermon delivered by Mr. Khamenei. Mr. Rezaie's background, and his initial willingness to stand with Messrs. Mousavi and Karroubi in challenging the vote, lent the opposition a sense that it was representing a broad swath of Iran's political spectrum.
Messrs. Mousavi and Karroubi have largely stayed on the sidelines since the violent crackdown on protests following Mr. Khamenei's Friday sermon. Mr. Mousavi didn't appear to have attended the protest Wednesday night in front of parliament.
Iran's security services have proved effective at stamping out protest quickly. But images of the regime's violent crackdown, sent out of Iran via the Internet, have often proved more damaging to the regime than the protests themselves. Official reports have put the body count from Saturday's crackdown at more than a dozen. Security services have rounded up hundreds of protesters, including some journalists. They have also clamped down on foreign reporting, banning journalists from covering unauthorized gatherings.