The Daily Background

At the end of the first act of the musical Les Miserables is a song called One Day More, in which the full ensemble sings about their hopes and fears for the coming day which will see many of them dead. The Tony-winning production was of course based on the book of the same name by Victor Hugo about the failed anti-monarchist June Rebellion of Paris in 1832. The rebellion was led by relatively wealthy students who believed that the masses would join them (they didn’t, and were quashed by government forces).

In Tehran Friday night, a different version of One Day More can be heard. The following is a video taken in Tehran in which people chanting from balconies can be heard:

In the background, people can be heard shouting Allahu akbar (God is great), as they have done for several nights now. The chant was used similarly during the Iranian Revolution of 1979, although this time instead of also chanting death to the Shah, they have been supplemented this time apparently with “Death to the dictator,” meaning Ahmadinejad.

On Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei all-but threatened that any future protests would be crushed in a brutal manner that would make recent violence pale in comparison. The planned march at 4PM, Iranian time (7:30ish AM EST Saturday) is set to go ahead anyway, and a lot of Iranians on Twitter that I’ve been following are nervous but hopeful. The rest of us can do little more than hope that it turns out better than it did for most of the characters in Les Mis. Already there are signs that it will: for one thing, the movement in Iran right now isn’t solely students like earlier unrest has been (such as in July of 1999); rather reports indicate that it’s cutting across many demographic barriers and gaining steam rather than losing it, especially due to Khamenei’s speech which was widely interpreted as needlessly inflammatory.

Now the ball appears to be in the court of the Iranian army and law enforcement. Tomorrow things will come to a head, and either the police will choose to side with the protesters and Khamenei will have made the biggest mistake of his career, or the police will side with Khamenei against their country and there will be a huge amount of needless bloodshed (which may in turn spark more potent mourning rallies and lead to even more unrest). There were some unconfirmed reports earlier that army officials who opposed Khamenei’s upcoming crackdown were being arrested pre-preemptively, which isn’t a good sign. I suppose we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog