{"id":1444,"date":"2009-07-28T11:03:38","date_gmt":"2009-07-28T15:03:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/idblog\/?p=1444"},"modified":"2009-07-28T11:03:38","modified_gmt":"2009-07-28T15:03:38","slug":"a-marathon-not-a-sprint-in-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/2009\/07\/28\/a-marathon-not-a-sprint-in-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"A Marathon, Not a Sprint In Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It has now been nearly seven weeks since the disputed election in Iran, and it seems clear that the opposition has settled in for a long, slow fight.  This must be of serious concern for Ahmadinejad and his supporters.  The opposition movement has found a major anniversary or milestone to commemorate roughly once a week since large scale protests were forcefully put down by the government.  A little over a week ago it was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.juancole.com\/2009\/07\/rafsanjanis-friday-prayers-sermon.html\">Rafsanjani leading Friday prayers<\/a>, before that the <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/idblog\/2009\/07\/09\/iranian-protesters-return-to-streets-everyone-else-to-twitter\/\">10 year anniversary<\/a> of student protests over the closing of reformist newspapers, and this week, the 40 day anniversary of the death of Neda Agah-Soltan, whose death was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=OjQxq5N--Kc\">captured on video<\/a> and shared around the world via YouTube.  As the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/07\/28\/world\/middleeast\/28iran.html?_r=1&amp;ref=todayspaper\">New York Times<\/a> reports: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mr. Moussavi and other opposition leaders have asked permission to hold a public mourning ceremony for the dead on Thursday. That day has great symbolic importance, because it is 40 days after the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose death ignited widespread outrage in Iran and beyond.<\/p>\n<p>Commemorating the 40th day after a person\u2019s death is an important mourning ritual in Shiite Islam; similar anniversaries for dead protesters were essential in the demonstrations that led to the Islamic Revolution in 1979. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It would be surprised if both sides are not also priming for next week, when Ahmadinejad is expected to be formally inaugurated.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It has now been nearly seven weeks since the disputed election in Iran, and it seems clear that the opposition has settled in for a long, slow fight. This must be of serious concern for Ahmadinejad and his supporters. The opposition movement has found a major anniversary or milestone to commemorate roughly once a week [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1814,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[622],"tags":[8696,8697],"class_list":["post-1444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iran","tag-iran-protests","tag-neda"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1814"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1444"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1813,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444\/revisions\/1813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/idblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}