Iran elections 2009

For weeks we’ve been trying to find people who have fled Iran after being arrested or injured in the demonstrations. It’s been difficult – not because such people do not exist, but because they’re all so scared. Those who have come to Europe know that if they speak out, their relatives back home are likely…

In times of stress I always like to read poetry, so I’ve been turning to the Poem of the Day in the Tehran Times, the English language daily here. This is a paper which carefully toes the government line and favours not-so-subtle and sometimes bizarre unstated comparisons – there was a front page story today…

So did they rig it and if so, how? So far the evidence seems circumstantial and no-one I’ve spoken to has managed to provide hard proof.

Every now and again you get a day in journalism which you will never forget. Monday was one of those. We set off in the morning not knowing what the day would bring. Mir Hossein Mousavi, the opposition candidate, had said he and other reformists would attend a mass rally but the Interior Ministry had…

TEHRAN, IRAN – Whenever the riot police charge, waving their batons, with their shields to the fore, people run down the streets to escape. The black-clad riot squad move in phalanxes on motor-bikes, riding up on the pavements, swiping at passers-by. You don’t have to be a protestor to get hit.

  I feel as if I went to bed in one country and woke up in another.   Yesterday, I saw thousands of Iranians laughing and happy as they queued in the sunshine to vote. Today, thuggish looking secret policemen with walkie-talkies stood on every street corner, while riot police with truncheons roared around the…

An enormous thunderstorm has blown up over Tehran tonight. Maybe tomorrow’s election results will bring another kind of tempest.     I’m cautious about opinion polling in Iran, but it’s clear that the opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi is at the very least a serious challenge to President Ahmadinejad, who seemed so secure just three weeks…

ESFAHAN, IRAN – Some snapshots from the Mousavi rally (the video report is here).

ESFAHAN, IRAN – A video dispatch from this historic city, on one of the most passionately fought election campaigns I have ever seen anywhere: (Read more from Esfahan here.)

ESFAHAN, IRAN – I can bear witness to the fact that support for Ahmadinejad’s main rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is not confined to wealthy north Tehran. We nearly got crushed in the crowd in Esfahan‘s central square yesterday. It wasn’t even the main man speaking but his prominent and much-loved supporter, former President Khatami. The…

I love Iranian politics. It never fits into the simple reformist/conservative paradigm so beloved of us western reporters. It’s about complex relationships between different layers of power. And it’s never about the people in the public eye. It’s always about Rafsanjani.

TEHRAN, IRAN – The biggest mosque in Tehran was full. It was, according to a true believer I met, the biggest rally ever, anywhere in the world. Their leader, president and presidential candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was to address them. They screamed slogans, sang patriotic songs and waved national flags. Music blared from huge speakers. It…