The vultures come home to roost

Rico says the article by William Yong in The New York Times shows how Iran might soon have the same issues as other countries in the Middle East:

With democracy tremors rocking the Arab world, Iran’s opposition has challenged its hard-line leaders to allow a peaceful demonstration, ostensibly in support of the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
The request to hold a rally falls short of an open call for supporters of Iran’s “green” movement to return to the streets after more than a year, but it is the closest that Iran’s opposition has come so far to trying to join in the historic events.
“In order to declare support for the popular movements in the region, in particular, the freedom-seeking movements of the people of Egypt and Tunisia, we request a permit to invite the people for a rally,” read the open letter from Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, two of the presidential candidates who were defeated by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in what they said were rigged elections in 2009. The letter, dated Saturday, was addressed to Iran’s Interior Ministry and published on websites affiliated with Iran’s opposition.
While similar requests have recently been met with flat refusals or utter disregard, the letter puts Iran’s hard-liners in a quandary. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and many other conservative figures have offered clear and ringing support for the movements in Egypt and Tunisia. Their refusal to grant permission for such a rally would be seen by opposition supporters and perhaps others as hypocritical.
“This is a test for the Islamic Republic,” Ardeshir Arjomand, an adviser to Mr. Moussavi, said in an interview with the JARAS opposition website. “If officials do not give permission for this demonstration, it will be a clear sign that they fear the people’s true beliefs,” he said. “They are afraid that the turnout will be a show of the support for Mr. Moussavi and Mr. Karroubi."
With just under a week to go before the proposed demonstration, the call has provoked a large online response centering around the 25 Bahman Facebook page, a reference to the rally’s date in the Persian calendar. In less than 24 hours, the page attracted a slew of comments, promotional posters, videos, and more than 12,000 “likes” from online activists hoping to revitalize a protest movement that had been subdued after an effective campaign of state violence, threats, imprisonment of key figures and a blanket ban on access to the mainstream government news media.
That does not mean, however, that the renewed online interest will necessarily translate into renewed protests, opposition members say. “It’s just 12,000 clicks,” said a former reformist journalist with a derisive wag of his finger. “It is nothing. Do they expect people to come into the streets again and again? For what?” asked the journalist, who refused to be named for fear of retribution from Iran’s authorities.
Seemingly in tandem with the opposition leaders’ protest call, the former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani issued a statement on the Arab awakening that seemed to be aimed at the hard-liners. “The crises in Tunisia and Egypt show that they either did not hear the voices of protest of their people or did not wish to hear them,” said the statement, which was published on a website representing Iran’s conservative old guard. “These uprisings will not be limited to just two countries,” Mr. Rafsanjani warned, before describing the protests in Tunisia and Egypt as arising from a “fire under the ashes”, a phrase widely used by the opposition here to refer to their own subdued grievances.
“Everyone has been asking how these Arabs could stand firm while we got scared and ran away,” said a young opposition supporter who helped as a translator for foreign journalists during the 2009 election campaign. He repeated a slogan heard often in opposition circles since the eruption of unrest in North Africa: “Why could Tunisia, while Iran could not? The word for 'could', in Persian, sounds close to that for 'Tunisia'. Winning for us on 14 Febriaru would mean taking over the streets and staying the night,” he said. “But if they just go home and shout God is great! it’s no use.”