Khamenei Put On The Ropes

Never, in the history of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has the Supreme Leader been so resiliently challenged.

Just after yesterday's Ali Kamenei strongly-worded warning that street protests must stop, Iran's defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi displayed defiance:

We expect that you (the Guardian Council) accept the will of the nation by nullifying the election and holding a re-runanything other than the nullification of the election results by the Guardian Council would be a grave mistake.

In the mean time supporters of opposition leader Mir-Hossein Moussavi are planning more mass rallies today, openly challenging a ban by The Interior Ministry issued late on Friday.

Last night, opposition supporters in Tehran kept on their rooftop chants, a protest tool reminiscent to that used three decades ago during the anti-shah protests.

In a dispatch from Tehran, Borzou Daragahi offers a glimpse at that:

It starts with two young female voices, quietly at first, almost gently piercing the quiet of the night.

"Allahu akbar!" they cry out a few minutes after 10 p.m. "God is great!"

Then another voice joins in from the other side of the block. This one belongs to an older woman. "God is great!" she responds in a rasp that suggests decades of hardship and swallowed rage. "Allahu akbar!"

After a minute or two, a male voice joins in. It's as if he needed a little time to put on his slippers and clamber to the rooftop.

"Allaaaaahu akbar," he moans.

Within a few minutes a choir of voices erupts.

"Ya, Hossein!" a man with a sturdy baritone announces across the lush trees. "O Hossein!"

"Mir-Hossein!" a group of women shrieks back, every ounce of energy straining through petite voices.

"Marg bar dictator!" a voice erupts. "Death to the dictator!" And then more voices, a cacophony of anonymous anger. "Marg bar dictator. Marg bar dictator."

(...) The gesture harks back 30 years to the months before the Islamic Revolution. It was a way to reassure others that they weren't alone in feeling wronged and enraged.

Today it motivates people to attend the peaceful marches that have become the largest acts of civil disobedience in three decades.

Khamenei, dashed hopes of compromise yesterday, and many fear -now that he is put on the ropes- of bloody times to come. He simply told 14 million Iranians to "drop dead".