A victory for protesters?

Amir Taheri:

AS Iranians mark another day of mourning for demonstrators killed by the Islamist forces last week, protest-movement leaders are engaged in behind-the-scenes debates over strategy.

Pointing to the diminishing size of the protest crowds in Tehran, some Khomeinist-regime apologists have already concluded that the protest movement is fizzling out.

In fact, the movement has won a major victory by ending the myth that the regime controls "the street" through "the popular masses." The last 12 days have shown that the opposition can produce larger, more determined crowds. The only way the regime can regain control of "the street" is by deploying security forces in a de facto state of emergency.

A regime that used crowds as a means of political communication is now afraid of crowds.

That fear was manifest yesterday, when the authorities cancelled a demonstration they'd ordered against alleged British intervention in Iranian affairs. Fears that the opposition might exploit the rent-a-mob gathering as cover for its own demonstration persuaded the regime to scrap the exercise.

"We know that we can have the streets whenever we want," says an adviser to Mir Hussein Mousavi, the former prime minister who challenged President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the disputed June 12 presidential election. "The question is: Where do we go from here?"

...

The regime can still put enough force on the streets to deny access to the opposition as it did yesterday. It has the will and little in the way of inhibitions in using force to suppress the will of the people. The opposition can continue to challenge Ahmadinejad's legitimacy and it has probably already ruined it in the eyes of the rest of the world. To what extent that will effect his ability to continue in office is another matter.