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For months, Iran's opposition leaders have asked the government to earn back people's trust by allowing protestors to air their views and organize peaceful marches. If not, opposition leaders warned, the protesters will only become more radicalized. "There's danger ahead," presidential candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi admonished back in July. "A regime that has depended on the trust of the people for 30 years can't depend on the security forces overnight … We can still rebuild the damaged trust of the people. The security of the regime is tied to this
[endeavor]." Those dire predictions came true today as thousands of protestors clashed violently with security forces and chanted slogans questioning the regime and the very authority of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—an opinion that, even well after the election, was far beyond what it was publicly permissible to say. And as the protests become more extreme, they'll only elicit fiercer crackdowns, which will sharpen their dissent even further, in a spiral effect.

The protestors gathered in Tehran and at least half a dozen other cities to commemorate Student Day, which marks the death of three students at the hands of the shah's security forces in 1953. Traditionally, the president goes to the campus of a Tehran university to address students. Former president Mohammad Khatami repeatedly addressed crowds of students on Student Day during his two terms as president. President Mahmou... >>>