On Friday June 12, millions of Iranians eagerly lined the streets to cast their votes for the nation’s next president. After months of campaigning, televised debates, and tremendous public involvement, Iran was preparing itself for a democratic milestone.

But at 8 p.m., mere hours after the polls closed, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei congratulated current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a landslide victory with 63 percent of the popular vote.
“That night it was very quiet,” said Parisa Dianati, a St. Louis resident who spent the summer in Tehran visiting her family. “It was like a dead city. People were still waiting to see how it was even possible. There was no way the votes could have been counted that quickly.”
The next day, however, violence escalated. Trashcans were set on fire. Car horns began honking all day long. Stones were thrown at guards, at buildings, at cars.
“We were honking too,” Dianati said. “Because you feel this rage—how can they steal people’s votes? How can they pretend to believe in democracy?”
According an article published in The New York Times, the 12-member guardian council of the Islamic Republic declared soon after the election that it was the “healthiest since the revolution” and that protestors should be punished “ruthlessly and savagely”.
Green, the color of rival candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s party and a holy color in the Islamic faith, became the symbol of resistance. Mousavi organized peaceful demonstrations through his pages on Twitter and Facebook, on which his “Current Office” is now listed as President.
“If you were walking in the street and your shirt was green the guards would hit you without hesitation,” Dianati said.
Travelling with her husband, her 7-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter, Dianati had a frightening encounter with the Basij, or Islamic guards.
Stuck in traffic, the family had their car windows rolled down. Suddenly, two guards approached on motorcycles. One neared the car and swiftly hit her husband in the face. Dianati was not dressed properly, and could have been arrested. Nevertheless, she spoke up.
“The guard told us to put our windows up because people were throwing stones,” Dianati said. “I told him, ‘We are the people. You are not. They are throwing the stones at you.’”
Although the Dianatis themselves did not attend protests, they followed them closely.
“My heart was filled with pride for the protestors,” Dianati said. “They didn’t want something sudden to happen because that would mean blood and lives lost. The protest in Azadi (Liberty) Square was silent. But many were still killed.”
The death of one young girl, Neda, whose name means ‘Voice’ in Farsi, has become the central rallying cry of the movement. A video of her shooting continues to circulate the Internet, instilling alarm in viewers worldwide.
“When I saw the video, I was in disbelief,” said CHS senior Ali Sehizadeh, who was born in Tehran in 1992. “I had to watch it again and again because I didn’t know what to do with my feelings. I wanted it to sink in.”
It is Muslim tradition to mourn one day, three days, seven days, and 14 days after a death. But on the third and seventh day, the government closed every mosque in Tehran. On the 14th day, millions walked to Neda’s tomb in protest.
“Now it is different,” Dianati said of the video’s impact. “With the Internet and all of this immediate communication, people cannot just do things and pretend they didn’t happen.”
Nonetheless, the Iranian government has made its greatest effort to inhibit the movement of information. Cell phone, Internet, and texting services were cut in the immediate aftermath of the election.  Foreign media was banned from reporting on the streets.
As a result, the Dianatis witnessed terrible acts that were never reported. In an apartment complex down the street, residents held a protest during the day. That night, the Basij entered the complex in a truck filled with stones, taking down the security guards at every entrance.
“They destroyed the buildings,” Dianati said. “They broke the furniture. They broke the glass. They broke the televisions. They broke every single car. They broke everything they could. It didn’t matter if it was expensive or cheap. It was all broken.”
Residents of all ten buildings, 40 floors high each, had their livelihoods destroyed—simply for living in a certain apartment.
Yet despite the government’s unthinkable actions against its citizens, life continues for many in Iran.
“My brother’s engagement party was right before we left,” Dianati said. “It was in a beautiful garden, and there were even fireworks. People must learn how to continue living, even with so much hardship around them.”
On July 17, thousands gathered for a Friday prayer sermon from Former Prime Minister Hashemi Rafsanjani, who spoke out against the fraudulent elections. He called for the release of the hundreds who had been arrested in previous weeks.
Rafsanjani had been prime minister for eight years, but the post was eliminated after he left office—another sign that Khamenei might be afraid of independent, more secular-minded leaders.
“It seems to me that they wanted to bring someone up who would be easily manipulated,” Dianati said. “They knew Mousavi was strong. What you hear is that Ahmadinejad is going to remain president. There won’t be another election.”
Sehizadeh also fears that power has become too centralized.
“The Supreme Leader has become very much like the Shah, although the purpose of the revolution of 1979 was very much to oust the Shah,” Sehizadeh said.
Dr. Bahar Bastani, an Iranian professor of internal medicine at St. Louis University, puts this observation into historical perspective.
“A lot of things that happened in the Christian World earlier are now happening in the Muslim World,” Bastani said. “Europe went through the Dark Ages, during which the Pope was a supreme religious ruler. They discovered that absolute power created absolute corruption, and the subsequent distribution of power became democracy. This is an excellent thing that the Western world has learned, but the Muslim world has not yet reached that stage.”
The near future, then, will be a very telling time for all Muslims. The next months may determine whether protestors’ efforts can bring profound change to a system that has circled once again into centralization.
“They have hijacked the little democracy we had, so now we must put it back,” Bastani said. “Secular movements and secular governments must gradually come. We have matured so much politically since 40 years ago.”
Iranians applauded President Obama, who forthrightly told the Iranian government that it had violated “international norms and universal norms”, and defended the people’s right to hold peaceful demonstrations.
“What Obama did was fantastic,” Bastani said. “He supported the demonstrations, then backed off. The United States is very blessed to have a wise leader compared to the previous administration. We don’t need war and we don’t need sanctions; we just need to let the Iranians do what they must do.”
On the streets, Dianati said, people are chanting against China and Russia, who were the first to acknowledge Ahmadinejad as President. There is no anger, however, toward the United States. In fact, there is little anger directed toward a specific person.
“This time Iranians are not even saying ‘Down to Ahmadinejad!’ or ‘Down to Khamenei!’” Dianati said. “This time they are asking for their liberty. They are asking for their votes back.”