Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei Backs Disputed Election Result - The Times. Iran's Supreme Leader has appealed for calm and attacked enemies" questioning the result of the presidential vote that has sparked the biggest street protests in the Islamic Republic's history. Today the Iranian nation needs calm," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in his first address to the nation since the upheaval began. He said Iran's enemies were targeting the legitimacy of the Islamic establishment by disputing the outcome of the election. Tens of thousands of Iranians had gathered in and around Tehran University to hear the Friday prayer sermon.
As Standoff Deepens, Iran's Leader Urges Return to Faith - Nazila Fathi and Michael Slackman, New York Times. As another day of defiance and uncertainty loomed in Iran's capital, many Iranians looked to an appearance by the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who led the national prayer service from Tehran University on Friday. Political analysts said they hoped that the leader would reveal his ultimate intent, indicating a willingness to either appease the opposition or demand an end to protests that followed presidential elections a week ago. He blamed media belonging to Zionists, evil media" for seeking to show divisions between those who supported the Iranian state and those who did not.
Opposition March Mourns Iranians Killed in Protests - Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post. A huge throng of opposition supporters, many clad in black, took to the streets of Tehran on Thursday to mourn protesters killed by a pro-government militia and back a challenge to the proclaimed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In response to a call by the leading opposition candidate in the presidential election last Friday, Mir Hossein Mousavi, the massive procession streamed toward Imam Khomeini Square largely in silence, then broke into chants against Ahmadinejad and alleged electoral fraud, witnesses said.
Shadowy Iranian Vigilantes Vow Bolder Action - Neil McFarquhar, New York Times. The daytime protests across the Islamic republic have been largely peaceful. But Iranians shudder at the violence unleashed in their cities at night, with the shadowy vigilantes known as Basijis beating, looting and sometimes gunning down protesters they tracked during the day. The vigilantes plan to take their fight into the daylight on Friday, with the public relations department of Ansar Hezbollah, the most public face of the Basij, announcing that they planned a public demonstration to expose the seditious conspiracy" being carried out by agitating hooligans."
Several Scenarios, Not All Bright, Could Result From Iran's Tumult - Gerald F. Seib, Wall Street Journal. It's nothing if not exhilarating to watch young people in Tehran's streets trying to change the nature of the Iranian regime, and to imagine that they are forcing deep and positive changes in the nation that has been America's most implacable foe for a generation. Yet it also would be a mistake to ignore this darker reality: In the short run, the turmoil there could just as easily make Iran more dangerous and harder for the West to deal with. The fact that it's possible to envision such starkly different outcomes illustrates just how remarkable the story unfolding in Iran really is, and how much it is pulling the country and the watching world off into uncharted territory.
Can Iran's Top Clerics Defuse the Crisis? - Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor. Iran's top clerical leadership is taking steps to defuse six days of crisis and violence, as Iranians challenging the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took to the streets again on Thursday. Iran's supreme religious leader Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei is due to lead Friday prayers in Tehran - at which conservative factions have vowed a large turnout - and he is expected to deliver a message of unity. The powerful Guardian Council is to meet on Saturday with all three defeated candidates. The council is examining 646 opposition complaints, and has said it will consider a partial recount. But the 12 clerics on the Council have all but ruled out a full recount, never mind a re-run of the election, as demanded by defeated top contender Mir Hossein Mousavi- and the hundreds of thousands of Iranians who have rallied for him on the streets this week.
Iranian Leaders to Meet With Challengers - Farnaz Fassihi and Roshanak Taghavi, Wall Street Journal. One of Iran's top oversight bodies said Thursday it will invite the country's three unsuccessful presidential challengers to a meeting to discuss the contested elections, while as many as hundreds of thousands of protesters marched mostly peacefully through the capital's streets. Many protesters wore black and carried candles in mourning for people killed in recent clashes. The move by the Guardian Council was the latest in a series of unprecedented concessions to the losers in disputed June 12 elections that, Iran state media has said, were won in a landslide by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mir Hossein Mousavi and two other presidential challengers have alleged vote rigging, a charge Mr. Ahmadinejad has denied.
Iran Leader's Top Aide Warns US on Meddling - Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's top political aide said Thursday that the United States will regret its "interference" in Iran's disputed election. The aide, Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi, said in an interview that President Obama's comments this week about street demonstrations in Tehran and other Iranian cities will "make things harder" if the Obama administration attempts to engage Iran in talks over nuclear and other issues.
'The Fear Is Gone' - Voices from Iran, Wall Street Journal opinion. Editor's note: The following are firsthand accounts that were solicited by Journal assistant editorial features editor Bari Weiss. Some were translated from Farsi. Surnames have been omitted to protect the writers.
This Is for Real - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion. What's happening on the streets of Tehran is a lesson in what makes history: It isn't guns or secret police, in the end, but the willingness of hundreds of thousands of people to risk their lives to protest injustice. That is what overthrew the shah of Iran in 1979, and it is now shaking the mullahs. This is politics in the raw -- unarmed people defying soldiers with guns -- and it is the stuff of which revolutions are made. Whether it will succeed in Iran is impossible to predict, but already this movement has put an overconfident regime on the ropes.
Fragile at the Core - David Brooks, New York Times opinion. Most of the time, foreign relations are kind of boring - negotiations, communiqués, soporific speeches. But then there are moments of radical discontinuity - 1789, 1917, 1989 - when the very logic of history flips. At these moments - like the one in Iran right now - change is not generated incrementally from the top. Instead, power is radically dispersed. The real action is out on the streets. The future course of events is maximally uncertain.
How Mir Hossein Mousavi Trapped the Supreme Leader - Shahram Kholdi, The Times opinion. What is clear is that the protests are showing no signs of dying out - and that they have spread beyond Tehran and the middle classes to working-class neighbourhoods that were thought to be unequivocally pro-Ahmadinejad. My elderly grandparents' nurse told me of clashes in her working-class town of Pakdasht, a suburb of Karaj. The dispute over the presidential election has pitted neighbours against each other. So how should we understand what is happening? First, Mir Hossein Mousavi and his supporters are not seeking regime change, but reform of the Islamic Republic. Second, the protests are also not just about the future of Iran, but a battle over the legacy of the 1979 revolution. And third, is that the protesters are not just drawn from a metropolitan elite.
'No Comment' Is Not an Option - Paul Wolfowitz, Washington Post opinion. President Obama's first response to the protests in Iran was silence, followed by a cautious, almost neutral stance designed to avoid "meddling" in Iranian affairs. I am reminded of Ronald Reagan's initially neutral response to the crisis following the Philippine election of 1986, and of George H.W. Bush's initially neutral response to the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991. Both Reagan and Bush were able to abandon their mistaken neutrality in time to make a difference. It's not too late for Obama to do the same.