Iran: Saturday Rally

Mousavi has not died, has not been injured, has not been arrested, and has not canceled the rally.

From a reliable, credible source in Iran:

confirmed - Mousavi - SATURDAY 4pm Enghelab Sq - HISTORY will be watching us

Update: News reports, inside and outside of Iran, confirm that the government cracked down with tear gas, batons, and chains. Other sources claim that guns and unknown chemical agents were used (the latter apparently dropped on crowd via helicopter). Many killed, many others wounded. Still the protesters continue into the night. Some sold sources for up-to-the minute reports from Iran not issued by Iran's State media:

• NiacINsight
• Andrew Sullivan
• NYT's The Lede
• Nico Pitney at The Huffington Post

Iran: Friday Opposition Events

News about Friday's events in Iran have been in something of a flux: it looks as though someone has been sending misleading information about the opposition leaders' plans for Fridays. Mir-Hossein Mousavi's website appears to have been hacked earlier today, and someone has been tweeting and retweeting misinformation over Twitter. The best I can ascertain :

People should attend Friday prayers.
and
All rallies have been postponed until Saturday, 4:00 pm (I'll post more later).

There seems to be a consensus about no Friday rallies. For information on Friday prayers, I've relied on reliable Tweeters as well as news sources that excel at vetting information, such as NiacINsight (a blog for the Iranian-American community) and Nico Pitney at The Huffington Post. See the following posts on Friday prayers:

From NIAC:

6:32 pm: What’s going on here?

Earlier in the day, we saw a message posted on Mousavi’s facebook page saying “Mousavi & Karoubi ask supporters NOT to attend Friday prayers (which is being delivered by supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei).” We thought this was strange, since they were saying exactly the opposite just a little while ago. Now, Nico and the NYT both have commented about the same message going up on Twitter. [ed: NYT only posted the Tweeted message. No commentary]

Just as we were trying to figure out what was going on on Mousavi’s facebook page, the message was removed. This appears to be an organized attack on Mousavi and Karroubi’s facebook and twitter accounts to send misleading messages to supporters. We got the impression that they were trying to take these messages down as fast as possible, so we are pretty convinced they’re not legitimate.

And from Pitney at HuffPo:

5:58 PM ET -- Fishy. This was just posted on Mousavi's official Twitter account. "Mousavi & Karoubi ask supporters NOT to attend Friday prayers (which is being delivered by supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei)." This seems quite unlikely to me, trying to get to the bottom of it.

Update: Patrick Disney from the NIAC says this message was also posted on Mousavi's Facebook page and then removed a little later. Seems like someone outside is trying to cause trouble.

Like I said, the message that Pitney posts has been tweeted and retweeted all night long, and it seems to have overwhelmed messages noting that Mousavi's sites have been hacked.

Iran: Thursday Rallies (Updated)

From a reliable Iranian Twitter feed:

Events for Thursday(conf by Mousavi) at 14:00 Pasdaran, Shahrzad Blvd UN Building,17:00 Emam Khomeini Sq.

Updated: There's a change in plans:

Today's protest is ONLY in Toopkhaneh Sq at 4pm according to Kalameh. Mousavi is going to be there

Iran Wednesday

This morning, as ever, Nico Pitney has some fascinating entries on his Iran liveblog--go here to read up on the Iranian soccer team's show of support, Iranian authorities' threats against 'bloggers, and Rafsanjani's (alleged) emergency meeting with the Assembly of Experts (which, if true, is a huge deal), and a concrete example of how the army is protecting pro-Mousavi protesters from militia.

Also: this article from The Guardian reviews evidence of a purge of reformist figures in Iran, as well as this item:

There were also unconfirmed reports that Mohammad Asgari, who was responsible for the security of the IT network in Iran's interior ministry, was killed yesterday in a suspicious car accident in Tehran. Asgari had reportedly leaked evidence that the elections were rigged to alter the votes from the provinces. Asgari was said to have leaked information that showed Mousavi had won almost 19m votes, and should therefore be president.

Mousavi has called for a silent protest today to honor those killed in the past several days. According to this Reuters story, the crowd measures in the "tens of thousands" (The Guardian estimates "more than 500,000") and is, indeed, largely silent.

Iran: Rallies Planned for Weds and Thurs

From Tehran Bureau's Twitter feed:

Tehran Rallies confirmed-Wed jun17. 5pm SILENT PROTEST 7 Tir Square . Tehran - Thursday jun18. 2pm bolvare sharzad sazmane melal