Setareh Sabety

Ahmadinejad is claiming landslide victory. The official ministry of interior results show 64% Ahmadinejad victory!

Moussavi shouts fraud and demands recount. Not even the pro-Ahmadinejad papers this morning seem to have expected such an outright claim of victory.

My nephew, voting for the first time in his life, in Mashad,who reported that turn out was 70% for Moussavi to 30% for Ahmadinejad just said this:

"Agar mardom narizan biroon man ta omr daram ray nemidam."

He, not being a fanatic, does not think of going out and killing someone he thinks of quitting. The fanatics' biggest advantage, their most powerful weapon, is their willingness to die. Not us. We are the kind of Iranians who have taken tyrant's abuse for thousands of years. We adapt. We don't fight.

If people don't rise they have not learned the first thing about democracy: you pay for it with blood!

What this blatant manipulation of results shows is that the hardliners have no fear of the people. They are willing to die, we are not, so they win. As simple as that.

They are thugs and the people are scared. I don't want blood shed, I am a mother, and I feel for that youth but this is ridiculous! Let us hope against hope that the people will show real outrage after official results are announced.

I should not talk is takes a lot of courage to face thugs with automatic weapons. I certainly don't have it. For a moment many of us thought that maybe the system had matured enough to self-correct. It was a brief moment indeed!

If the people who made such a courageous stride in the past few weeks on the streets of the cities of Iran, if they who moved the most cynical of us to hope, do nothing then this will be the most embarrassing episode in the history of democratic development in our country!

All I have heard coming out of Iran right now is complaints about being duped. This is not a defeat if we don't stop here. This is the great opportunity to rise and engage in some form of real resistance. Let us hope that the youth, who inspired us and the leaders who gave them hope, stand fast in the face of this blatant abuse of power! Let us hope that they fill the streets of our cities again tonight and show the thugs that a people when fed-up enough will rise!