Live: Iran protests
As the Iranian authorities continue their crackdown on opposition rallies, foreign journalists, and the internet, what next for the protest movement? Follow live updates on the aftermath of Iran’s disputed presidential election
5.23pm:
Guardian columnist Simon Tisdall wonders when Barack Obama will weigh in behind the anti-regime protesters.
5.13pm:
An email correspondent says that www.iranproxy.org and www.oghab.org provide anonymous Twitter relay service for Iranians “on the ground”.
Caveat: I can neither verify the correspondent’s identity nor vouch for him.
4.51pm:
Saeed reports that Mousavi’s wife Zahra Rahnavard today joined injured students at Tehran University, and condemened violence by the government and riot police.
Also, Mousavi has written a letter (in Farsi) to the Iranian security council saying that personnel from the Ahmadinejad-loyalist Basij militia are doffing their uniforms and attacking innocent people in the streets.
Thanks Saeed for the translation and the dispatches.
4.48pm:
This photo, reportedly of a student killed by regime security forces, has been emailed around Iran today with no source attribution. Caution: It is gruesome.
3.47pm:
The official Iranian Republic News Agency reports that Gholamali Hadadadel, head of the Iranian Parliament, the Majlis, has invited Mir Hossein Mousavi to participate in a televised debate Friday on controversy surrounding last Friday’s vote, our Tehran correspondent Saeed Kamali Dehghan writes.
4.32pm:
A friend of the Guardian in Tehran writes that her Gmail account has been filtered, and that her internet service provider said it has been ordered to cut all emails, messaging software and many websites, especially foreign news outlets.
“So back to the good time of the revolution of 1979!” she writes, tongue in cheek. “We should [be] finding new ways to follow events.”
4.28pm:
Thanks Matt. Daniel Nasaw in Washington here, taking over. If you are reading this in Iran and have news, please email me at daniel.nasaw@guardian.co.uk
Robert Tait reports that a centrist website has found that voter turnout in at least 30 towns exceeded 100%.
In the most specific allegations of rigging yet to emerge, the centrist Ayandeh website – which stayed neutral during the campaign – reported that 26 provinces across the country showed participation figures so high they were either hitherto unheard of in democratic elections or in excess of the number of registered electors.
Taft, a town in the central province of Yazd, had a turnout of 141%, the site said, quoting an unnamed “political expert”. Kouhrang, in Chahar Mahaal Bakhtiari province, recorded a 132% turnout while Chadegan, in Isfahan province, had 120%.
3.30pm:
More than 500,000 Iranians are silently marching from from Haft-e-Tir Square to Vali Asr Square, reports Saeed Kamali Dehghan in Tehran.
Many are wearing black in mourning for those killed in earlier protests. Protesters want to go to Tehran University later to mourn the killing on Sunday of students in a dormitory.
Reuters says that “tens of thousands” of people are protesting.
One street leading to the square was packed for several kilometres, witnesses said.
Most of the protesters were silent and making victory signs. Some are holding pictures of those killed.
The authorities say the rally is banned.
(That’s it from me, Matthew Weaver, my Washington colleague Daniel Nasaw will be taking over. Thanks again for your comments, please keep them coming).
3.15pm:
A picture claimed to be of today’s opposition rally has been posted to Twitpic. It shows thousands of people marching on a flyover labelled the “Krimkhan bridge”. The date of the picture is impossible to confirm, please let us know if you have more information.
2.45pm:
Abtahi’s website is back up and running. It reads: “Mohammad Ali Abtahi, former vice president during Mr Khatami’s presidency and the advisor to Mr Karroubi in the presidential election had been arrested today (Tuesday). Whenever he gets released, he will write here on his website.”
2.30pm:
The planned opposition rally in Tehran is under way. “Stay in big groups,” advises one tweet from the city.
Twitter users all over the world are being urged to change the location in their profiles to Tehran, in an attempt to frustrate the Iranian authorities. “It’s much harder if we’re all ‘Iranians’,” tweets Peter Havens.
2.15pm:
Football update from Robert Tait: The green armband wearing members of Iran’s national team appear to have been forced to remove their pro-Mousavi emblems. The team emerged for the second half of the match against South Korea with none of its members wearing the symbols.
The match ended in a 1-1 draw, putting Iran’s qualification for the World Cup in doubt.
2pm:
My colleague Mark Tran has been going through various comment pieces of the Iran crisis.
He picks out this by Joe Cirincione, a nuclear weapsons expert, who admits to changing his mind about the country, “this is no longer Khamanei’s Iran”, he says.
And this by Robert Dreyfuss in the Nation which says: “The people who wanted change aren’t going to get it. The regime is too powerful, and it controls all the levers of power: the army, the police, the Revolutionary Guard and paramilitary groups, thuggish militias, the judiciary and courts, the media, and more. Those who hope that the reformists, including Mousavi, former President Khatami, and cleric Mehdi Karroubi, will support a revolt that makes use of the mass movement against Ahmadinejad will find their hopes dashed.”
1.30pm:
Iranians fans gathering for the football match in Seoul unfurled a banner that read “Go To Hell Dictator” and chanted “Compatriots, we will be with you to the end with the same heart,” according to AP.
12.45pm:
Several players in Iran’s national football team took the field wearing green armbands - signifying support for Mousavi, who adopted green as his campaign colour - for the World Cup qualifier against South Korea today, writes Robert Tait.
Reports vary. Some say four team members are wearing the band - but others suggest it is the whole team. There appears to be photographic evidence here. There’s another here.
12.30pm:
Was the pro-Ahmadinejad rally Photoshopped to make it look larger?
12.15pm:
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran claims the following people have been arrested: Saeed Hajjarian, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, Behzad Nabavi, Abdolfattah Soltani, Alireza Tajik, Kayvan Samimi, Shiva Nazarahari, Mahsa Amrabadi, Abdolah Ramezanzadeh, Mostafa Tajzadeh, Bagher Oskouiee Amir Mardani, Mohsen Aminzadeh, Mohammad Atrianfar, Mohammad Tavasoli, Taghi Rahmani, Reza Alijani, Hoda Saberi, Ahmad Afjeiee, Emad Bahavar, Mojtaba Khandan, Saieed Zeraatkar, Rouholah Shafiee, Ali Mehrdad, Mohammad Reza Ahmadinia, Ali Pour Khayeri, Shahin Nourbakhsh, Ali Taghipour Mohammad Shokuhi, Ashkan Mojaleli, Maysam Varahchehre, Mahdieh Minavi, Farhad Nasrollahpour, Ahmad Zaydabadi, General Secretary, Hadi Kahal, Hamed Iranshahi, Jalil Sharabianlu, Ghafar Farzadi, Majd Jabari, Rahim Yawai, Abbas Pourazhari, Lay Farzadi, Shabeti, Shamlu, Dr Ghafarzadeh, Dr. Soltaniazad, Dr. Panahi, Dr. Seyflou, Dr. Dadizadeh, Mehdi Yarbahrami, Mansour Ghafari, Hojatollah Amiri, Amir Hossein Jahani, Rohdah Rahimipour, and Mehdi Khodadadi.
Activisits that have disappeared include Payam Haydar Ghazvini, Nasim Riahi, Mojtaba Rajabi, and Atar Rashidi.
This photograph, by our Tehran correspondent Saeed Kamali Dehghan, lists the names of 75 students who were arrested. The name in red is a protester who was killed by the riot police.
If you have more information on the arrests please report it in the comments section below.
12.05pm:
The speaker of Iran’s parliament, Ali Larijani, has ordered an investigation into “unfortunate incidents” at Tehran University when a dormitory was raided by the police, according to Press TV.
There is video of the damage caused here.
12pm:
In another sign of the internet crackdown YouTube has announced that it is only getting a tenth of the traffic it usually gets in Iran despite being deluged with videos from the country.
It also denies censoring the videos.
“Given the critical role these videos are playing in reporting this story to the world, we are doing our best to leave as many of them up as we can. YouTube is, at its core, a global forum for free expression,” it says.
11.20am:
A key Iranian figure, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has remained invisible since the election, has called an emergency meeting of the Assembly of Experts, according to the US-based Iran expert Reza Aslan.
“If true, this is a bombshell,” says Nico Pitney on his excellent live blog of the crisis on the Huffington Post.
11am:
The man who leaked the real election results from the Interior Ministry - the ones showing Ahmadinejad coming third - was killed in a suspicious car accident, according to unconfirmed reports, writes Saeed Kamali Dehghan in Tehran.
Mohammad Asgari, who was responsible for the security of the IT network in Iran’s interior ministry, was killed yesterday in Tehran.
Asgari had reportedly leaked results that showed the elections were rigged by government use of new software to alter the votes from the provinces.
Asgari was said to have leaked information that showed Mousavi had won almost 19 million votes, and should therefore be president.
We will try to get more details later.
10.55am:
Mir Hossein Mousavi’s website, Kalemeh, has carried a statement from him urging relatives of protesters killed or injured in street clashes to go to attend a peaceful demonstraton tomorrow, which he will lead, writes Robert Tait.
The venue of the planned demonstration has not been disclosed. But street demonstrations held to mourn the dead were one of the motors that gave momentum to the 1979 revolutionary movement.
10.50am:
A picture of what is claimed to be a huge opposition rally in Isfahan is being widely circulated on Twitter. There is also an extremely disturbing footage showing the death of a student in Isfahan [warning distressing content] on YouTube.
10.30am:
Mousavi supporters on Twitter are urging people to attend a rally at 5pm (1.30BST) in Tehran’s Tir Square. A message calling for a “silent sea of green” at the square is being repeatedly retweeted.
10.21am:
There are reports that Saeed Laylaz, a political analyst often quoted in the Guardian, has been arrested at his home.
The Guardian’s former Tehran correspondent Robert Tait says as many as 500 may have been arrested since the election. The figure appeared on the website of Radio Zamaaneh, a Farsi-language station, and was attributed to Aaron Rhodes, the spokesman for the campaign, who they interviewed.
10.05am:
The Revolutionary Guard, an elite military force answering to Supreme Leader, warned bloggers to remove any materials that “create tension” or face legal action, AP reports.
Meanwhile, the US-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran says there has been mass arrests of leading reformists including politicians, intellectuals, activists and journalists.
It is getting reports that in the city of Tabriz more than 100 prominent figures have been arrested.
10am:
The Iranian authorities have intensified their crackdown on communications by blocking access to Yahoo, writes Saeed Kamali Dehghan from Tehran.
Yahoo Messenger had played an important role since Friday, when the Iranian government began to block Iran’s mobile phone network and satellite TV channels, including the BBC’s Persian Service.
“Yahoo Messenger was one of the most important means that Iranians could still distribute information after the government filtered Facebook and Twitter‚” said Mahmoud Mirhashemi, 24, an engineering graduate from the Iran University of Science and Technology.
“In the early morning I couldn’t log into my Yahoo Messenger account. First I thought that’s because of the government clampdowns on the internet but then I found that I have access to other websites but not my Messenger,” he said.
“The internet has a very important social function in Iran in comparison to Europe and other countries. We are one of the top 10 world’s active blogging communities because of the level of censorship inside the country and now the government is cracking down on the internet as well,” he said.
An Iranian blogger, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “Iran’s blogging community has been very quiet this week - mostly because they are afraid of being arrested. The government has already filtered thousands of websites and blogs since Friday’s election.”
Iran has already blocked access to Facebook, Twitter and at least 20 websites affiliated to Iran’s defeated reformist candidate, Mir Hussein Mousavi, although some users still can update their profiles by using proxy sites.
“Before this we could bypass filtering by using proxy websites, the links for which were distributed daily among friends by email. But now the Iranian communication ministry has also begun to tackle proxy websites too‚” said Majid Farahani, a 21-year-old student.
“But there is still a small number of people who update their Facebook and Twitter profiles by using special anti-filtering programmes installed on their PC rather than regular proxy websites. The problem is that many people don’t know how to use this software‚” he said.
9.55am:
Iran’s foreign ministry has summoned European ambassadors to criticise their “interventionist and impudent” stances on the disputed election, according to the state news agency ISNA.
9.45am:
The English language version of Iran’s state media, Press TV, reports that Mousavi supporters have called for another rally in Tehran this afternoon.
It notes the previous crackdown on similar rallies. “Tehran’s governor general Morteza Tamaddon is quoted as saying: “Seven people were killed and 29 injured during the illegal rally on Monday.”
The report adds: “While Mousavi backs the right of his supporters to express their dissatisfaction with peaceful protests, the candidate, who suffered a crushing defeat, has asked his supporters to keep calm and vigilant and to not fall into ‘traps’.”
9.40am:
A man from Tehran, tells Small World News that most people are worried about their safety and fears more trouble at today’s demonstration. In a three minute call he also says that internet bandwidth has been reduced and websites have been closed or hacked.
9.15am:
Our Middle East editor, Ian Black, says the opposition movement is “amorphous and leaderless” in contrast to the power of the state. He says the outcome of the current power struggle could hinge on a partial recount of the election ordered by the guardian council. “How many people are going to believe the outcome?” he asks.
9.10am:
Ominously the blog of the reformist Mohammad Ali Abtahi is no longer available. In his last post he described the election as a “swindling”. Abtahi, who was a senior adviser to the former president, Mohammad Khatami, was arrested yesterday.
8.55am:
Another opposition protest is being planned for today, according to the BBC and Reuters.
Reuters copy is now accompanied by this warning: “Reuters coverage is now subject to an Iranian ban on foreign media leaving the office to report, film or take pictures in Tehran.”
The Guardian’s Tehran correspondent, Saeed Kamali Dehghan, writing in Index of Censorship, describes the struggle in getting information out of Iran.
“I will continue to report, but I fear that I may be arrested,” he writes.
8.50am:
Twitter linking update: My bosses (our own Guardian Council) have decided that it is best to err on the side of caution and not to link to Twitter updates from Iran for now.
8.45am:
More Iran cartoons: this one shows Ahmadinejad erasing the “public” from the Islamic Republic of Iran; this show a military boot crushing a voter; and here’s Steve Bell’s take on Ahmadinejad’s problem with counting.
8.20am:
More disturbing video footage of the clampdown on protesters has been posted to YouTube (and talked about on Twitter). As is so often the case it is impossible to know when this was filmed, but I haven’t seen it before.
8am:
On the subject of Twitter, we face a tricky dilemma.
We have been contacted by a number of people urging us not to link to individual Twitter users in Iran. They claim that this puts people in real danger, although Twitter users in Iran have not repeated this concern.
On the other hand Twitter users are providing vital updates on the situation at a time when foreign journalists are facing severe restrictions. Linking to tweets (which are of course published on the internet) helps readers to asses the veracity of what is being reported. If we don’t link won’t this simply help silence opposition and citizen journalism in Iran?
It’s a difficult issue.
7.50am:
We reported yesterday that Twitter had delayed an upgrade to its network because of the vital role it is playing in the Iran protest. It has now emerged that the US state department requested the delay, according to the Washington Post. This despite Barack Obama’s stance of not meddling in Iranian affairs.
7.45am:
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameni has condemned the protests as “vandalism”, according to state TV.
But he also endorsed the guardian council’s decision to conduct a partial recount of Friday’s ballot.
“Those in charge of supervising the elections are always trustworthy people, but this should not prevent an investigation into possible problems and clarifying the truth,” Khamenei is quoted as saying.
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