Context

NYT and the Beeb reporting that Rafsanjahni’s daughter, who’s been participating in the protests, has been arrested, along with other members of his family. Talk about throwing down the gauntlet.

AlArabiya now reporting that the Assembly of Experts perhaps ready to throw Imadinnerjacket under the bus:

Members of the assembly are reportedly considering forming a collective ruling body and scrapping the model of Ayatollah Khomeini as a way out of the civil crisis that has engulfed Tehran in a series of protests.
The discussions have taken place in a series of secret meetings convened in the holy city of Qom and included Jawad al-Shahristani, the supreme representative of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is the foremost Shiite leader in Iraq.
An option being considered is the resignation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s president following condemnation by the United States and other European nations for violence and human rights violations against unarmed protestors.

@Mistress Cynica: Arrested, apparently later released. Rafsanjahni’s family has already been forbidden from leaving the country.

Also, very difficult to tell the mood in Qom, although everybody presumes Rafsanjani is furiously working behind the scenes there.

And, of course, while the Assembly has the formal authority, the Revolutionary Guard has the guns. You don’t make a move on Khamenei unless you’re confident the Guard will back you, or at least stand aside.

But yes, gauntlet thrown. There’s no turning back for anyone now.

Neda … those eyes as she died. There are no words.

@blogenfreude: Andrew Sullivan quoted Melville to accompany that image of her and those eyes and it seemed rather appropriate:

There is sobbing of the strong,
And a pall upon the land;
But the People in their weeping
Bare the iron hand:
Beware the People weeping
When they bare the iron hand.

Per this Time article on the traditions of Shiite Islam in regards to martyrdom and mourning the dead, 3, 7, and 40 days after a death are the days to honor them. The commemoration for “Neda” haven’t even happened yet. I anticipate thousands marching and carrying her picture.

@SanFranLefty: Heads on a pike are too good for those fuckers for having that young woman killed in front of her father.

@nojo: Right and the neocan cabal probably has lit up the network it used during Iran-Contra and is negotiating with a thug from the Revolutionary Guard to push aside the mullahs and their puppets.

@Dodgerblue: I can’t get her father’s screams out of my head. I’ve been thinking about him all day, seeing as how it’s Father’s Day here in U.S. ‘Merika.

@SanFranLefty: Me too.

More on Neda, from Nico at HuffPo:

A blogger apparently in touch with Neda’s family members offers some new details (translated by reader Nima): she was born in 1982, apparently her full name was Neda Agha-Soltan, and she was at the protest with one her professors and several other students. She was, they said, shot by a basiji riding by on a motorcycle. Also, she was apparently buried today at a large cemetery in the south of Tehran. ABC News’ Lara Setrakian writes, “Hearing reports Neda was buried in Behesht Zahra cemetery earlier today, memorial service cancelled on orders from authorities.”

Unclear from this whether that’s her father or her professor with her in the videos.

[Ahmadinejad’s] reinterpretation of Twelver Shi’ism excludes not only any form of rule by the mullahs but also any form of electoral democracy. In this way Ahmadinejad hopes to outflank the two principal political forces that have been fighting for power in Iran since the middle of the 19 th century. His message is: neither mullahrchy, nor democracy

http://regimechangeiran.blogspot.com/2005/11/ahamdinejad-first-100-days.html

The above quote comes from a 2005 post describing Ahmadinejad’s first 100 days. There is so much that we (Americans) simply don’t know or understand about Iranian politics.

@karen marie: So true.