Iranian protests revive icons of revolutions past

Reply: "Someone pointed out Gandhi and MLK as an example of peaceful protesting. Here's my take on that: MLK was not facing a dictatorship, so it doesn't apply. Gandhi had a unique situation: peaceful protest worked here because he only had to convince the people of India that they should not be governed by foreign powers (England). In Iran's case, there are no foreign powers to rise up against, only a dictatorship that also happens to have millions of local supporters. Violence is necessary here."

How events will turn out in coming days and weeks is unpredictable.

Mousavi has called the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fraudulent and has stated the country must be purged of lies and dishonesty.

Khamenei has not relented, relying instead on what he sees as the power of his own image: a devout and patriotic cleric often appearing in front of photographs of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revered leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the shah.

On Saturday, Obama subtly challenged Khamenei's handling of the unrest by quoting King: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Protesters in the streets of Tehran have been holding up placards quoting Gandhi: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

All this in real time. The world's living room has turned into the world's Internet cafe. Iran is the story, everyone's connected. The tale never sleeps. Pictures are endless: fires in the street, stones hurled at helmeted police, tear gas, a green banner slinking like a snake over a crowd. Some become instantly iconic, such as the video posted Saturday on YouTube, of a young woman -- later identified as Neda Agha-Soltan -- falling to the ground and dying after being shot.

A man tries to stanch the blood flowing from her chest. Blood runs out of her mouth. Other men surround her. The camera, like an invited voyeur, moves and she seems to glance at it in the moments before death. The image of the young woman in bluejeans lying on the street played in endless loops.

One comment on YouTube said: "That gave me the chills the way she stared at the camera RIP."

Before Facebook and tweets, other icons were summoned.

In his 1982 book, "Shah of Shahs," Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski recounted the Islamic Revolution with a keen sense of images. In a conversation with a rug seller, Kapuscinski used the Iranian carpet as a metaphor for a nation that had endured revolt and was seeking a better future:

"Carpets are things that last -- a good carpet will retain its color for centuries. In this way, living in a bare, monotonous desert, you seem to be living in an eternal garden from which neither color nor freshness ever fades. Then you can continue imagining the fragrance of the garden, you can listen to the murmur of the stream and the song of the birds. And then you feel whole, you feel eminent, you are near paradise, you are a poet."

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jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com