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Reports from Iran say that large crowds of people in Tehran, Isfahan, Kermanshah and other cities used the celebrations over the Iranian soccer team's victory as an opportunity to come out into the streets and display indignation and hatred toward the ruling regime. They blocked the streets and clashed with the Guards Corps and Bassij.
According to these reports,
celebrations turned into political demonstrations in various parts of Tehran.
At several points, however, including Naziabad and Noor street near a sports
stadium (south Tehran), people clashed with the regime's forces, beating
them up and turning their vehicles upside down. On many occasions in the
past, athletic events have led to anti-government protests.
Mullahs' New Ploy Against Iranian Resistance, Iran Zamin News Agency, December 2
Reports from the mullahs' Foreign Ministry indicate that the regime's diplomatic missions abroad have asked many foreign journalists who intend to go to Tehran to cover the summit of the Organization of Islamic Conference to write articles against the Mojahedin and the Iranian Resistance upon their return from Iran. The journalists have also been asked to write that Iran is a safe country and that there is no such things as the opposition inside the country.
The action follows a decision
taken last month in a meeting of the regime's Supreme National Security
Council. After several meetings to "assess the crises" the regime is faced
with, the Council provided the mullahs' leaders with a report which warns
that the main problem confronting the "Islamic Republic" are the Mojahedin
who particularly in recent years have been able to organize public discontent.
Therefore they must be struck either politically or militarily and the
blows could include air raids or terrorist attacks, the reports adds.
Mullahs' President: Military Strength Above Development and Construction, State-Controlled Tehran Times, December 2
TEHRAN - President Mohammad Khatami said here Monday that the Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran should be strong enough to counter enemies and to provide the people with calm and security.
Addressing a ceremony held… at the Air Force University of Shahid Sattari, the president emphasized that construction, development and security will be materialized only if the Armed Forces maintain their strength. Developing the capability of the Armed Forces which leads to upgrading of the country's security, is a priority for the government, Hojjatoleslam Khatami reiterated.
He said, the committed and virtuous Armed Forces of Iran, under the command of the Grand Commander-in-Chief Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, are among the strongest forces of the world, and should be provided with the latest science and technology.
The Profane and Defiant World of the Iranians,
The New York Times Editorial Notebook, November 24
Teheran is a city of interior
lives. … in the evening Iranians retreat to their homes, the best sanctuary
they can find from the suffocating restrictions of Iran's Islamic code.
Everything that is forbidden in public is possible at home…
Yet even home does not entirely shield Iranians from the low-grade fear that permeates their lives. Iranians do not know when internal security forces will pounce on them. In that fear they have much in common with Soviet citizens I knew in the mid-1980's, before the stranglehold of Communism ended. The maintenance of a fundamentalist state, whether Communist or Islamic, requires a degree of terror to keep people from openly agitating for greater liberty…
In Teheran, it takes the form of security forces that appear without warning on streets and even at homes, arresting Iranians for violations of the Islamic legal code, like playing Western music, holding mixed-gender parties and, in the case of women, failing to wear sufficiently conservative clothing.
Often the security forces can be bribed to let people go, but not always. The punishment for those who cannot buy their release is a perfunctory trial and then as many as 80 lashes administered by a guard who wields a whip in one hand while holding a copy of the Koran under his other arm.
The forces are part of the large security apparatus controlled by the conservative clerics who run Iran. Their harassment has picked up in recent months, apparently in response to the unexpected election in May of Mohammed Khatami,...