Cell phone video shows Iran mullahs don't want seen

Fox News:

The most talked about confrontation in Tehran these days began normally enough. A young woman walking down the street with a headscarf (sliding a little too far down?) hiding only half her hair was accosted by the morality police, called a slut and told to cover up.

The incident became interesting when the girl responded with a Bruce Lee-like whoop and aimed a kick at her tormentor’s midsection. The girl knew martial arts, as she convincingly demonstrated to the approving cheers of the crowd that gathered around her to watch the whupping.

What made it famous? Someone recorded it on a cell phone. Within hours, it was local legend.

Zohre, a well-known actress, decided to imitate Paris Hilton by taping herself having sex. What she didn’t know was that her partner recorded the event, uploaded the steamy imagery to his cell phone, Bluetoothed it from one corner of Tehran to the other and put Zohre’s good name and career in jeopardy.

Nor did the popular and outwardly pious religious singer named Helali expect video of him entertaining two young girls without headscarves to become a backstreet hit. Today, Helali is singing the blues.

Islamic rule in Iran has withstood 28 years of Western outrage, economic boycotts and careful disdain by Iranians who long for more personal freedom. But the regime might not survive the cell phone, which Iranians are turning from a means of communication into a means — for symmetry? — of political protest.

Nearly every young Iranian — in a land where 70 percent of the population of 73 million is under 30 — owns a mobile phone. And every day tens of millions use them to send text messages, pictures and videos to their friends.

"No one uses a landline anymore," says Mossegh, a 20-something clothing salesman. "First of all, most of them don’t work. And anyway, I communicate with my friends by SMS, not calls. Calling just isn’t cool."

Set, who works in an electronics store in northern Tehran, says all his customers want the Nokia N95, because of its high quality camera, which can take and transmit pictures and videos of startling quality.

Pornography, of course, is the favored commodity, even in this Islamic theocracy. Knots of snickering teenage boys stare slack-jawed at the images of naked, writhing bodies they have downloaded, then exchange the images on their cell phones at coffee bars and pizza shops.

...

Ahmadinejad jokes are apparently popular on the phones too. The cell phone is a form of communication that the regime cannot control. Perhaps we need to find a way to tap into it with programming that young Iranians would find interesting.