Taliban Manual Says Mulla Omar Rules

Mulla Omar has released a pocket book outlining the rules of conduct for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. The unimaginatively titled manual "The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Rules for Mujahideen" can be seen as an attempt to reign in rougue criminal bands acting in the Taliban's name, and restore central control in the hands of Mulla Omar. It strictly forbids the exchange of hostages for money and says a regional religious authority should always decide the fate of individual captives.
The Manual condemns excessive suicide attacks, saying it should be reserved for "High value targets", and urges fighters to make sure civilians are not hurt in operations. The part about civilians is almost identical to US General McChrystal's announcements about the necessity to win the hearts of the afghan population.
Interestingly the manual also stresses regulating fighters under one command. It says that when mujahedin fighters meet or hear of fighters that don't answer to any of Mulla Omar's religious representatives, they should be made to submit to the chain of command or be disarmed.
This may be the beginning of new infighting, turning Mulla Omar controlled Taliban against criminal bands previously operating under the Taliban umbrella. But it might be premature to suppose, like al Jazeera, that this would make the Taliban weaker, as poor afghans join the ranks of the groups that pay the best, ie. those financed with kidnapping and drugs.
After all, the Taliban's first violent actions were as a vigilante group metering out on the spot justice for roving bands of fighters committing rape, robbery and theft in the nineties. A return to crimefighting and a strong central command might actually benefit the Taliban's image as they try to woe political figures and ordinary people scared of the random criminal acts of both the unreliable afghan police and the Taliban.

Mogadishu's Last Stand

Mansur the American


Street fighting in Mogadishu


Today ends the ultimatum given by the southern somali Mujahedin Youth movement, al Shabab, issued to the transitional government in Mogadishu. They have (through the means of a cassette tape delivered to the government) called for the government to lay down their arms and give up the capital or face being driven out by force.
The government refuses and relies on fresh weapons from the US funneled via Ugandan AU troops. The street battles are only hardening by the day. But there are also signs that the tension in the capital is becoming too great, with not only ordinary civilians among the over 200.000 refugees, but parliament members seeking refuge in autonomous Somaliland, which is generally unfriendly to the TFG.
At the same time comes a salafist recorded tape response to president Obamas trip to Africa tomorrow. In the tape the young, slim man known as Mansur the American engages in bombastic language. According to the FBI Mansur was born in the US and speaks perfectly good english, but has lived for a long time in Somalia and speaks arabic with an american accent. He commands a group of other salafist international tourist fighters for the Youth.
He now lashes out against the US, President Obama, moderate clerics, the somali President and transitional government, and makes a request of biblical proportions: he demands in a lengthy argument that the entire muslim population in the US must emigrate to a muslim country or burn in hell.
But few somalis are convinced of Mansur and his friends' hardline interpretation of Islam. They may go far with their guns, but if they really manage to capture Mogadishu the Youth movement may well find that their reign only lasts as long as the fear they can create with their weapons. They will only be more hated for every beheading they make, and there will be outrage, and there will be resistance.

Somalia - Mind Your Own Business

Ugandan AU forces in Somalia - The last stand?

Yesterday the US State Department announced that it has successfully shipped guns and ammunition to the African Union forces protecting president Sheik Abdullah Ahmed and the transitional government in Somalia, as well as some hard cash to help finance the build up of a functioning security force. But is this too little too late?
The Transitional Federal Government TFG is fighting for its existance. The jihad oriented salafist Al Shabaab, "The Lads", has practically overrun the greater part of the capital and controls most of southern and central Somalia. Yesterday they ostensively cut a hand and a foot off four suspected thiefs in Mogadishu to show that they are perfectly capable of fighting crime and disorder through fear and sharia law. Isolated African Union soldiers from Uganda and Burundi, at the moment 4.300 persons, are holed up and not capable of doing much more than barely defend themselves against mortarattacks and the increasing threat of suicide bombers (until recently not a common occurence in the area). The guns and ammunition now promised has been rushed to the AU forces for immediate use, which will surely be welcomed, but how fast can the government be expected to create a new army to counter the Lads when they don't even control the streets of the capital anymore? The government is recognized only in the north, and is just partially functional as an institution as hundreds of members of parliament and public servants have fled the fighting along with other civilians. Just a week ago the government was desperately calling for help through foreign military intervention.
Now that is something the Lads would surely love. They have been provoking Kenyan troops along the border for weeks with attacks and general acts of banditry, promising that any retaliation would result in a revengeful devastation of the glass towers of Nairobi. The kenyan interior ministry denies any plans to enter Somalia, but troops have effectively been massed on the border. It seems the defense ministry wants to keep the option open, or at least make sure there is an appropriate defense against southern somali militant raids entering the country.
If the kenyan military did enter Somalia however, it could unite a lot of angry people behind the Lads and make the TFG politically impossible.
And any further incursion by Ethiopia would definitely be just as bad, despite having made it possible for the TFG to return to its own country the last time. Even moderate sufis in the TFG, including fiercly anti-ethiopian president Sheik Abdullah Ahmed, would likely oppose such a move. He was after all part of the Islamic Courts Union ousted by Ethiopian forces last time around, and on the other hand his hardliner sharia positive position is something that gives him a slim chance of reconciliation with the south. Few nations could be more hated in the southern parts of Somalia, with the possible exception of the US. The Lads have a trusted ally in Ethiopia's bitter enemy Eritrea for weapons supplies, whether by air or through the port of Kismaayo. Occasional blockading of eritrean ships to the port does not seem to have hindered the Lads taking over Mogadishu. Perhaps an air blockade, as suggested by many african nations, could reduce the amount of arms that enters the south, but it could also hamper genuine aid efforts, and the question is if it really makes any sense anymore.
So what can be hoped for? Well, if Pakistan's Swat valley is anything to compare with (and tourist jihadists from Afghanistan and Pakistan have come in the hundreds in Somalia influencing the Lads), jihadist salafist rule will prove so cruel and foreign to a large mainstream population that it sooner or later provokes more armed resistance of ordinary angry people than it can handle. If the transitional government can lead this resistance and stay in place, or again has to move to safety or collapse entirely, remains to see.
Right now, it can only be said that any foreign intrusion into Somalia will probably backfire as hard as all foreign interventions have for the last two decades.

Afghanistan - Airstrikes against criminals

US policies in Afghanistan has been called into question by the new commander in charge of foreign forces. General Stanley McChrystal says there needs to be a "cultural shift" to avoid civilian deaths and create trust with the local population.
He replaces General David KcKiernan, an old-school cold war general who's main skill lies in moving entire divisions and overrunning a country in three weeks. Stanley McChystal is a Special Forces officer, much more proficient in battling the kind of sporadic guerilla attacks Afghanistan has been seeing. He was running special forces operations Iraq when his men tracked down and killed Abu Zarqawi. In a sense, he is more into police work than traditional warfare. A person who is not in a regular army or police force and is killing people is a criminal, and criminals don't form conventional frontlines that you can attack with airstrikes. This is where special forces often step in, or paramilitaries. When you need to do police work, keeping order and tracking down and taking criminals into custody, but know that those you are looking for probably have access to military weapons.
The question is if McChrystal is police enough, or if he and everybody else he commands are stuck in a military and ethnocentric way of thinking.
After all - and this is important - the new policy is in no grand way different than the one already in place. Civilians must always be respected. The problem is what soldiers on the ground really do when mortar shells are flying around them.
In the end it's all a question of where you draw the line between yourself and others. When you are an american soldier in a foreign land, probably never having been outside the US before, you will unconsciously respect local civilians less than your own comrades. You will have a strong attachment to the men around you who are wounded with you and save your back. And just about anybody else could be a potential danger to you. The same even happens in normal police forces, even when policing your own country, there is a corps spirit that for some eventually can lead to hatred and attacks on innocent civilians. The difference is that your local Bobby doesn't have access to airstrikes.

Ingushetia - Kadyrov to the Rescue

Ready to come to the rescue:
Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov

President Kadyrov of Chechnya suddenly appeared unannounced in Ingushetia this Tuesday claiming he had been authorized by russian president Medvedev to take action following the assassination attempt on ingush president Yevkurov. No one doubts he means what he is saying when he claims that "the revenge for Yunus-Bek Yevkurov will be cruel". The unexpected entry into ingush internal affairs by the infamously hard handed chechen president has stirred up some feelings among the establishment, at the same time as no one wants to contradict the man likely responsible for tracking down and killing opponents even as far away as Austria or Saudi Arabia. No one doubts that any action taken by Kadyrov would be just as cruel and arbitrary as the measures taken by president Zyazikov who stepped down last fall.
Ingushetia's first president Ruslan Aushev says he would be happy to step in again for the wounded president and that the ingush security forces were perfectly capable of dealing with the situation themselves.
Some fear the chechen president could use the incident to effectively take over the country and unite it with Chechnya into a single Vaynakh republic like in Soviet times. Although united by ethnicity and language, Ingushetia was spared of the violence seen in Chechnya during the two wars for independence there.

Ingushetia - The Cars That Go Boom

Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, president of Ingushetia

Something odd just happened in Ingushetia yesterday morning. A suicide carbomber targeted a motorcade near Nazran with the president Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who is still being treated in hospital for wounds to the chest and head. At least one bodyguard died, several others were wounded. There are conflicting reports as to whether the car was parked by the side of the road or made a maneuver to ram the presidents vehicle, but it seems there was in any case a person in the car triggering the explosion, with the force of an estimated 70kg of TNT.
Those who have followed the conflict in Caucasus know that suicide attacks have been extremely rare, and carbombs even rarer. They have appeared in the conflict as many resistance fighters gradually have turned from a mildly muslim (sufi) nationalism to embrace a more hardline saudi style jihad oriented internationalist salafist ideology, often financed by Saudi nationals concerned about their muslim brethren.
This attack is the latest in a series of high profile assassinations in Ingushetia and Dagestan countering a trend towards stability the latest months. Neighbouring Chechnya has been largely successfully bullied into russian-friendly submission by president Kadyrov and his ruthless above-the-law private army, and in Ingushetia things were seemingly going towards more peace and accountability. President Yevkurov inherited an Ingushetia practically on the brink of civil war in october 2008. His ex-KGB predecessor Murat Zyazikov had become an impossible figure and stepped down after months of draconian repression, including shooting, beating or arresting just about anybody, only further fanned anger and swelled the ranks of militant islamists in the area.
In this context, Yevkurov raised quite some eyebrows as the former military commander (decorated fighting militants in Chechnya) started actually talking to people about their grievances, making serious progress in stopping local blood feuds, and getting serious about cracking down on corruption even when involving other high politicians. In fact, a couple of weeks ago he even announced his own cell phone number on national TV so that people could call him in person if they had a problem with authorities. Stunts like these of course ensured him some widespread popularity, but also got him some quite powerful enemies.
The usual channels of information from guerrilla salafists welcomed the attack on the "apostate puppet ringleader" but seem not to know who was responsible, fanning suspicions that this was a very local initiative, possibly facilitated with intelligence provided by politicians and people in administration with a lot to loose if Yevkurov's war on corruption had gone on.
Around 60 persons have died so far this year in salafist jihadist related attacks and government crackdowns in Ingushetia. But this is an improvement from the situation just a year ago when the whole little country seemed to be breaking apart into another full scale caucasian war between islamic rebels and russian paramilitaries.
If the seriously wounded Yevkurov is now replaced with a tougher Moscow-backed hardliner chosen for anti-terrorist credentials, a return to random police and paramilitary violence could easily push the country, and indeed the region, back into an even greater chaos.

Iran - What not happened and what it means

Beaten, still not submitted.

After a tumultuous and historic weekend in Iran it is interesting not only to get stuck at trying to figure out what happened, but equally telling what not happened.
The protesters did not back down in the face of the more or less blatant threat of violence from Ali Khamenei during Friday Prayer.
They also did not get discouraged by the deaths on Saturday when Basiji sporadically fired on demonstrators, only more determined.
Also telling is the deathtoll, named as 10 officially. Thousands of police were posted throughout Teheran Saturday, trying to disperse tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of demonstrators. Still, only ten people died and only a few hundred were arrested. This is not the crackdown that will silence opposition and show them that it is too dangerous to speak freely. There were no tanks, no military trying to kill entire masses of people, and no deathsquads murdering known protesters in their beds later at night.
Despite being dispersed by numerous checkpoints and not being able to meet up in force at a single location, people protested in the streets anyway as they were redirected in a labyrinthic manner by security forces, making large parts of the center of the city one chaotic, peaceful, low intensive festival. People who were there tell of people helping eachother, giving eachother a ride, driving around in circles looking for protests, laughing, and an absence of fear. The ones fearing the most seemingly the outnumbered Basiji, some seen to panic or cry openly in the street.
This is not just about the election anymore. Khamenei has put his own authority on the line. The whole system of islamic republicanism as we know it in Iran could be on the line if there were a secular figurehead popular enough, but there doesn't seem to be. And Mousavi has not acted like the person who will ruin the entire hierarchical system he helped put in place.
And now, more than a week since the election, the protests are are still not loosing steam. New gatherings are announced already today, calls for strike are made, three days of national mourning will take place later this week.
It will be hard for the hardliners to get out of this one on top.

The Ayatollah Has Spoken

This is it. From now on the situation has become even more dangerous. Ayatollah Khamenei's unfailing support for Ahmadinejad at the friday prayers in Teheran today means the hardliners will not go without a fight. The rhetoric blaming foreign influence and downplaying the size and legitimacy of protests continues in an attempt to unite the masses behind the official election results. As busses moved in on Teheran carrying thousands of loyal hardline supporters from the countryside, hardline Basij militia have been seen preparing checkpoints over the city in preparation for planned and spontaneous weekend protests.
The 12 man council of Guardians who oversee the elections and have the last say in confirming the election results are Khamenei loyal.
The Council of Experts headed by Rafsanjani are not pleased with the election but will not do anything to dethrone the Ayatollah through the legal means.
The Ayatollah has now taken his stand and wagered all his political power on Ahmadinejad.
If protests continue unabated as can be expected, he will have to do something about it. The secret police have been detaining high profile opposition leaders in the hundreds throughout the week, to little effect on the size of protests.
The events of the latest week can not be compared to the events that lead to the fall of the Shah. The system of a clerically controlled democracy is not currently in itself under fire, at least officially, that would be dangerous and alienate too many people. The revolution is green, the color of Islam, and the movement uses the acronym gr88, as in green revolution in the persian year 1388. This is a clever positioning that makes it possible to cast the protesters as the true mass defenders of the system already in place. Even amid sporadic shouting of "Death to the dictator", the islamic republican system in itself is not questioned by just as many protesters shouting "God is great", and the only real political demands so far from the opposition has been to call for a re-election, not the end of religious rule. The main figures of the opposition are after all some of the founding fathers of the islamic republic, partly responsible themselves for massacres of thousands of political prisoners that protested against the regime in its first years.
What happens if reforms actually are pushed through is another thing. Once the grip starts to loosen, the regime might very well see things slip out of control fast and the entire political system in Iran crumble. But this is not what we are seeing quite yet. And a win for the opposition does not automatically mean the introduction of western style democracy, bikinis and beer in the streets. At top political level, all we have seen so far is a contest between different white haired members of the old guard from the revolution, the fact that some are reformist does not make them less religious. Some people internationally as well as locally, with high hopes about american style freedoms, may very well be quite disappointed if the opposition really pulls through.
The situation can now go a number of ways. Let's speculate on a few scenarios:
1 Nothing happens. The protesters grow tired and go home after two weeks of daily protests and Ahmadinejad rules four more years. People who have spoken out publicly are rounded up by the secret police in hundreds and tortured.
2 The Ayatollah has already ruled out backing down on Ahmadinejad. The compromise end with everybody sitting down and agreeing to have a rerun of the elections or rule together seems more and more unlikely.
3 The relevant authorities might allow for a reelection. Different people in high places tired of Ahmadinejad get enough backing to talk sense into the Council of Guardians This outcome could be possible if the protests keep their massive mainstream, pacifist character. It would seriously challenge the divine authority of the Ayatollah and might herald future more deeper reforms or possible collapse of the political system.
4 The protestors may overrun and overwhelm prisons, government buildings and Basiji command posts. This would require more audacity and brutality than we have yet seen in earlier protests. It could happen as a reaction if Basiji or IRGC starts murdering more protesters. It would follow a pattern of other regime changes in eastern european countries, and in Iran we have seen it when protesters besieged Basiji headquarters. So far it has ended in deaths. To be successful it would require that the Basiji and the IRGC all stand back and refuse to kill their fellow men and women even in the face of losing control of important buildings. And if they don't there are always the freshly flown in arab militants ready to fight for their loyalist employers. For all the signs of some singular shows of support among IRGC, this is a big wager for the opposition and might end in serious massacres.
5 The army goes into action on the constitutionally legal grounds of protecting the nation from foreign forces illegally employed within it's border, ie arab militants from Iraq, Palestine or Lebanon presently helping the Basiji as volunteers. The IRGC stands back or joins. Brief streetfighting gives way to detention of Basiji and foreign militants, as well as nationwide arrests of people responsible, some commanders, and possibly Ahmadinejad himself. This is a long shot but might still happen if the crackdown becomes violent and arab militants play a large part in it.
6 The worst option is of course that Ahmadinejad loyal Basiji, IRGC, and foreign militants all descend upon peaceful demonstrations in a massive show of force, making a massacre that would make Tienanmen Square fade in comparison, and then start making thousands of arrests, torturing people and condemning them to death by hanging from cranes in mass spectacles to state an example. A generation loses interest in politics and hope in change and the system stands unchallenged for at least another ten years.
The next days will be crucial to see what direction the development will take.

Iran – A House Divided

As developments unfold in Iran the opposition may seem to be an unstoppable "sea of green". The police has started to become more lax, or in the case of Teheran's chief of police even openly supporting the opposition by walking with the marchers yesterday, and other police officers charged with upholding the order wearing green scarfs in support or smiling at the protestors.
The parliament, the Majlis, has ordered an investigation into the incidents where suspected plainclothes members of the Basiji militia broke into university dorms and and attacked students and damaged property. 8 students seem to have been killed in these attacks in Teheran, Isfahan and Shiraz.
Mousavi has a strong ally in Rafsanjani who is trying to mobilize the Council of Experts against Khamenei. For the first time since 1979, the undisputed status of the Ayatollah seems to actually be swaying.
The army is standing back and taking a neutral position, and even some parts of the Revolutionary Guard may be supporting Mousavi.
So what could possibly go wrong? Well, everything.
The chief of police in Teheran has been arrested for taking part in the demonstrations. Smiling policemen are alright, but smiles don't cost anything and there are numerous examples of that from other demonstrations around the world that finally turned violent anyway. In the end, the police are doing a job, and if someone in the right place decides that it is their duty to stop a mass gathering on the grounds of security, they will be people ready to do it, and there won't be so many smiles anymore.
Unconfirmed reports from inside Iran suggest that loyalist IRGC forces are quietly taking over the reluctant army's command posts in preparation for more violence. Foreign arab-speaking militants have been deployed in support of the Basiji, unclear whether from Lebanon, Palestine or Iraq, but they are there and they will have no second thought's on using violence like an iranian might have against other nationals. It's a classic tactic to use foreign armed forces to loyally support your own side in a civil war. A Tienanmen square style crackdown is still possible. Parts of the army may well be considering a move in favor of Mousavi, but they have to be careful not to let the IRGC stop them before they have time to do anything.
Rafsanjani has seemingly not been able to "impeach" the Ayatollah despite his sway over the Council of Experts as their chairman, the Council of Guardians that supervise the elections are mostly hardliners lead by an extreme hardliner, and the Ayatollah is still bent on having Ahmadinejad for president for another four years.
And the original problem of who has popular support is not yet resolved. In the midst of allegations over fraud, Ahmadinejad may still have a large support from ordinary people in the countryside who's only source of information are heavily controlled and in many cases outright lying state controlled media. The millions that marched in the streets yesterday for Mousavi are not mentioned with a word on state televion. Many will actually believe that nothing big has really happened and that anti-Ahmadinejad protests are violent acts of small bands of troublemakers financed and puppeteered by meddling americans and israelis.

Iran Update

As more information becomes available in english, allegations of electoral fraud and the general picture of what is happening in Iran are beginning to become clearer.
It is plausible that the election results do not reflect anything but an arbitrary pre-set number based on pumped up figures from earlier opinion polls.
A letter has leaked from the interior ministry apparently giving an election result that favours Mousavi. It is addressed to Ayatollah Khamenei to present him with the result and do as he pleases with it, and it places the responsibility for naming the president in the hands of the religious leader.
A tv still also shows the number of votes for one of the opposition candidates actually decreasing over the course of a couple of hours as the counting was in course. This could though theoretically be attributed to a later reassessment of the validity of the votes in question.
Strong arguments include evidence of weeding out dissidents from parts of interior ministry dealing with the election, and some of them, including a former interior minister, telling the Mousavi faction that they have indeed won a majority of votes. The same source also tells that in 70 districts the number of votes counted were more than the number of inhabitants eligible to vote.
The argument that there must have been fraud in Mousavi's azeri home province since he didn't win there is weaker. Ahmadinejad still has traditionally the support of the rural working class, speaks fair azeri after eight years of service in the area, and made big deal out of this during the campaign there by reciting poetry in azeri.
This does not mean that all but Teheran is for Ahmadinejad. There has at least been massive rallies for the green revolution in Isfahan and riots in Shiraz in recent days.
The position of the army seems as divided as the old revolutionary scholar elite. A former defence minister and admiral is a Mousavi supporter, and when police tried to arrest him yesterday, marines scrambled to protect him and the police had to stand down.
There are also sign that the police are beginning to crack. Riot police separating pro-government from Moussavi supporters yesterday shielded the opposition protesters from armed Basiji hardliners.
Police are no longer entirely able or willing to enforce the ban on foreign journalist reporting on riots.
Basiji beat, threatened, and forced students out in the streets to shout pro-Ahmadinejad slogans and take part in pro-Ahmadinejad rallies. Pictures of which were then photoshopped and presented by state media.
In other places around the country tonight, Basiji raided university dormitories and attacked students. At the same time protesters in Teheran, wary of entering the dark streets with random patrols of Basiji, were standing on rooftops shouting slogans, symbolically echoing events from the last days of the Shah regime.
The deathtoll of last days' riots is unclear. Official figures say eight dead. But several hospital workers in Teheran report that the military have ordered riotwounds to be sent to military hospitals instead. Deceased from the riots, some children with gunshot wounds, are loaded on military trucks and taken away before the hospitals are allowed to register their names.
There was some hope that an unprecedented meeting of the council of experts tonight, the only authority that has the power to legally replace the Ayatollah, would yield some results, but it appears only to have ended in a consensus, recited today by the Ayatollah, that the violence must end and the four presidential candidates all must distance themselves from any violent acts.


The stills showing votes for the opposition decreasing.


Evidence of state media photoshopping pictures of pro-government rallies.

Iran Elections

Hands up everyone who likes Ahmadinejad. No, me neither. And apparently not a lot of people in Iran either if we are to believe the latest developments and protests in Teheran. But how are we to interpret the election results?
Even three weeks before the election, Ahmadinejad was clearly ahead in polls.
66% of votes casted for incumbent president Ahmadinejad is a lot compared to opposition leader Moussavi's 33%. That's 24 million against 13 million votes. Even with fraudulent votes, that's a lot of votes to fake.
What we saw of the election campaign in international media focused on Ahmadinejad's random nature, his inability to harness the country's riches properly, and his international status of relative isolation and rogue image. If the international community had a say in Iran Ahmadinejad wouldn't live long in politics. But the international community doesn't have a vote in Iran, only iranians do.
What if the election results really do reflect how the majority of people in Iran really have voted. Iran is an advanced nation that has even developed nuclear power despite international sanctions. Teheran is an immense modern city. There is a wealth of educated and progressive people in Iran. But Iran is big. Really big. As in most industrialized nations, most people don't live in the capital, most people don't have a higher education, and most people don't twitter because they don't have a computer and they don't care. We can count on them to be conservative, religious, nationalist or regionalist as opposed to internationalist, and to be quite susceptible to the kind of populism that Ahmadinejad has been guilty of throughout the campaign – including the stunt of distributing free potatoes and filling mass election rallies by closing schools and other state services.
You have to keep in mind that the election results are very class polarized, and Ahmadinjads followers have been quite good at picking up on what the poorest masses out in the country really need, such as securing health insurance for 3 million poor rural carpet-weaving women.
Just because a lot of secular minded, educated people in the big cities and in diaspora are shocked and angry by the election results doesn't mean the results are not representative of a majority of the people. If there were no people who were serious about defending the regime there would be no one ready to fill the ranks of the police and shoot at peaceful protesters.
The vote was possibly partly rigged, partly the result of a combination of populism and fear.
The fact is, without international independent observers, there is no way of knowing.
But one thing is clear: Iran must choose it's own leaders.
Unseating a regime through violent action can never be a solution as long as there are democratic infrastructures in place. It may be flawed and subject to religious selection of candidates, state propaganda and police scare tactics, but there is already a popular voting system in Iran, where ordinary citizens actually vote for representatives in an even more direct way than in the US.
Violence risks further polarizing the situation into even more serious violence, and this in a nation that has all the potential for a civilized and peaceful progress towards more freedom.
Note that unlike in many dictatorships, the regime as well as the opposition consists of educated people and not just thugs with guns, although mainly one side seems to have the support of the gun-toting thugs in the police and armed forces, and ordinary people in the countryside.
If the opposition was a truly democratic majority mass movement, the majority of the armed forces as well would be with them and they wouldn't need to fear the violence of the police or republican guards. In the face of protests, they would just lay down their arms and cede to the masses, as happened in Serbia or Georgia. The massive numbers of people we have seen in pro-government rallies in Iran wouldn't exist, because there wouldn't be enough people who actually believe in the regime enough to able to bully indifferent people into propaganda stunts. This, however, has not happened in Iran, suggesting that the opposition simply doesn't yet have enough support.
This may be tough for secular freedom loving westerners to swallow. But it is important not to leap to drastic action before the ground is prepared. You can't force western style democracy on people who don't want it. It just won't work. If you try, it will backfire and create more violence.
The political system we have in Europe is based on an entire system of values and references that takes half a lifetime to learn and even here are not homogenous geographically. If you go to the countryside in any larger peaceful democratic european country you will have no hard time finding people sceptic to quite a few universal human rights, embracing the death-penalty and being just as prejudiced against other ethnicities and religions as any islamic extremist can be.
I say it often: Education is the most important thing of all. And to be able to travel and have access to free information is of course not bad either. Just don't expect change to happen all at once. It takes many years to change the mind of an entire nation.