A Scene From The Streets of Tehran

It's way past midnight in Tehran, but this city is not sleeping. Outside on the streets, people are honking their horns in protest and stretching their hands out of cars making peace signs — a sign of support for Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the opposition candidate apparently defeated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran's presidential election on Friday.
Some of Tehran's main streets have been turned into urban battlegrounds. Groups of mostly young men have set large garbage bins on fire in the middle of streets, torn out street signs and fences, broken the windows and ATM machines of state banks, and burnt at least five large buses in the middle of streets.
"They have totally fooled us," said one sad man, a 32-year-old state employee, standing by the roadside. "This time they went too far. They just want to eliminate 'republic' and turn this into an Islamic dictatorship," he said with a sigh.
On Ghaem-Magham Street, a lone chadori woman stood by the roadside, making a peace sign with her index finger wrapped in a green ribbon, saying "Mousavi" to every passing car. Out of 50 cars that passed, all but 5 either honked, rolled down their windows to shout their support, or made peace signs in solidarity.
One man passing by told her, "You wrote Mousavi, they read Ahmadinejad!" She responded: "They're illiterate and need to learn reading."
Other groups of people had formed fronts and threw stones at the police forces, leaving stones covering many streets. One of the men throwing stones said they would not stop until "they hold fair elections. Do they think we're that dumb?"
Wherever crowds were gathered, the police used pepper stray, which also affected passengers in cars and buses driving by. On Taleqani Street, where some of the worst clashes took place, a motorcade of basijis drove by waving metal batons and chains in the air.

From early evening onward, the entire mobile phone network was cut off, making it difficult for protestors to coordinate, or to learn of the widespread nature of the protests. The Internet was also blocked in certain parts of the city, and satellite TV trannsmissions were reduced to snow. Out of Iran's six television channels, only the all-news channel aired reports on the election, and those mostly exalted "the glory of people's participation in the election."
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