Farsi language radio station KRSI in Los Angeles took calls live this Tuesday morning from people gathered in the streets in Iran and broadcasted them live to listeners all over Iran.
Despite a total ban by the Islamic regime against celebrating an ancient Zoroastrian festival, traditionally on the last Wednesday of the Persian Year, by jumping over lines of smallish tumbleweed bonfires and chanting "your redness to me, my yellowness to you", crowds ignored the edict.
And faced up to the attacks from the mostly non-Iranian, mostly Arab mercenary Basiji forces.
Amazingly the unarmed populace retaliated and forbidden to use fireworks or even sparklers to celebrate, turned to making Molotov cocktails and burning regime official vehicles and often forcibly resisted their attackers.
Callers used the radio broadcast to share information about events in their cities or neighborhoods as they happened and issue calls – thus carried nationwide - for Wednesday's civil disobedience and anti-regime demonstrations.
In an outlying "suburb" near Tehran called Karadj, formerly a separate township, the revelers scared the Basijis with their unexpected reaction and reinforcements had to be sent in from Tehran to quell the riot.
Isfahan, a historical city about 150 miles south of Tehran, proved to be another major center of anti-regime fervor and both vehicles and government buildings were set ablaze. The Islamic Regime had to ban the sale of gasoline in containers to try to limit the arson wreaked on it.
Several other reports confirmed the regime's brutal attacks on Iranians celebrating the Festival of Fire (Chaharshanbeh Souri) all around the country. This ancient Persian celebration, predating Islam by a couple of thousand years, marks the approach of the Iranian new year (also pre-Islamic), celebrated on March 21, the vernal equinox.
People build small bonfires and jump over the flames to purify and purge themselves of all the negativity and pain of the passing year so that they can begin the New Year with a clean spirit and fresh outlook. During this celebration, it is also customary to light sparklers and throw fireworks.
Since the beginning of the Islamic Revolution, the mullahs have done everything they could to dissuade the people of Iran from continuing these Persian celebrations, calling them pagan in an attempt to eradicate the Persian heritage from Iran.
Over the past few weeks, there were threats of major March 14 clashes, as the mullahs continued to force the issue of this celebration being "haraam" - religiously prohibited or unclean - because it occurs during the religious month of Mohharram, which is enmeshed with mourning for long dead Shiite martyrs. Various major and minor clerics issued "fatwas". The regime sternly warned against sparklers and fireworks, decreeing them banned. Shops that sold these items were closed and padlocked by the regime's security forces from weeks before.
Last week, KAYHAN, the mouthpiece newspaper belonging to the "Fuehrer Mullah Khamnei", in yet another shameless attempt at destroying all things Persian, pronounced the observance of the ancient Persian New Year and the pre-New Year celebration of the Festival of Fire to be "haraam" (forbidden by Islam or religiously unclean).
Mullah Golpayegani who wrote the edict indicated: "The use of fireworks, sparklers and fire crackers which will lead to fun, conviviality and frolic is 'haraam' and any further references to all Persian traditions and culture existing before Islam is directly anti-Islamic and immoral."
Hojatieh (apocalypse and Armageddon) inspired President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and members of the Mullah hierarchy who knew that all of the regime's measures against this festival might fail, abandoned Tehran, instructing the majority non-Iranian Basiji security forces to savagely attack the Iranian people if they refused to give up their ancient Persian celebrations and appeared in the streets.
The guards launched tear gas and viciously attacked people, specially women, children and student activists. The regime's paddy wagons strategically positioned all around the cities of Iran began filling up as the security guards started beating and arresting celebrants.
The streets of cities all around Iran from Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, Ardebil, Kermanshah, Mahabad, Baaneh, Mash'had, etc. filled with people and in places such as the Gowhardasht neighborhood of the Tehran-suburb of Karadj took over the regime's police headquarters in that area and set that building on fire.
In Tehran alone, the 600 mobilized 18-wheeler paddy wagons previously put in place for the March 8th commemoration of International Women's Day were left in place to facilitate arrests and detentions.
The regime has mobilized Lebanese, Syrian, Afghan, Algerian, Saudi, Iraqi and Palestinian Basijis against the people in the streets. As Arabs, they cannot care less about hurting, wounding or killing a non-Arab Persian.
According to ILNA, the regime-run news agency, to control vehicle traffic during the celebrations, the regime filled the skies of Tehran and all other big cities in Iran with helicopters, making traffic control the official excuse.
Revolutionary Guard Sojedi-Nia the director of the Motor Vehicles department of the regime expressed alarm and fear that the traffic jams and gridlock stemming from the Chaharshanbeh Souri celebrations would require constant helicopter surveillance. Including some with machine guns.
Also stating that 30 "secret" bases would be controlling the situation from their posts.
The Ministry of Education and Training received orders to close all schools in Tehran. The director of public relations in this ministry announced that the disciplinary and security forces of the regime handed down these specific orders.
Fearing the worst and attempting to maximize control and oppression, the regime ordered that all cellular telephones and internet connections in several provinces and all major cities be completely shut down and blocked. Not very successfully as callers still managed to get through in large numbers.
The regime further organized it's agents and elements around the world to call into the Iranian opposition radios and TV stations (specially the KRSI broadcast from L.A.), in order to insult, smear, malign, insult and demoralize the Iranian people calling in as well as to offer up false reports on the reality of the events occurring inside Iran.
One such caller had to shout "nothing's happening over here, the streets are absolutely quiet" to be heard over the chanting of anti-regime slogans. (Memories of the amusing Information Minister Baghdad Bob of Iraq as US troops arrived below him, denying their presence).
This effort to quash or dilute the voices of the people who called in from Iran in order to report events going on there failed miserably this morning. Instead they appear to have been motivated the celebrants to gather in greater numbers on Wednesday.
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