For a few days, it seemed as if protesters in Iran were going to be able to force a new election in the wake of the fraud that took place there that claimed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been reelected by a landslide over opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi.

But then, the first wave of a crackdowns hit. Police and members of a religious militia  called Basij took to the streets to “disperse” those staging mostly non-violent protests.

As the days went on, “dispersal” led to the murder in the streets of a young woman named Neda who apparently was not even taking part in the protests at the time, according to her fiance.  He says she was “with her music teacher, sitting in a car and stuck in traffic” and just emerged from the hot car for a few minutes to catch some fresh air. Instead, she caught a bullet.

The crowds started to thin somewhat, no doubt because the people were rightly afraid of the repression unfolding on the streets of Tehran and around the country.

But having gone to the brink only to pull back somewhat, protesters actually now seem energized. They have no real leader but they now do have a martyr—the young woman called Neda.

A tighter fist promised

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are now stepping up their rhetoric…probably a prelude to stepping up their confrontational and repressive –not to mention anti-democratic- tactics.

“In the current sensitive situation..the Guards will firmly confront in a revolutionary way rioters and those who violate the law,” Reuters quotes from the Guards’ website.

One Iranian human rights activist I talked with today in Paris, says rumors are circulating that the clerics who have the power to fire the so-called “Supreme Leader” may resort to that in an effort to calm the waters.

But there is also plenty of evidence to suggest that the internal political power struggle inside Iran is likely to spawn more rather than less violent confrontations in the near future.

Too early to know how this will eventually play out!

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