GIN INC JOURNAL

The battle on the streets is fought also online as authorities attempt to block, jam and cut off communications.

Iran has slipped into a guerrilla-style Internet and Twitter game of strategies and slogans pecked out by protesters attempting to outflank a government that has shut down communication outlets, leaving the nation breathless on snippets of text and stealthily uploaded pictures.

It is a battle on the streets and across the airways affecting the rest of the Middle East as well, a realm where technology is both churning out and smothering polarizing messages and images. Iranian authorities have blocked opposition websites, jammed satellite TV channels and cut off text messaging. Still, word is trickling beyond the censors, linking, however sparsely, opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rule from the capital of Tehran to those in villages in the north.



The StopAhmadi twitter is both philosophical and terse:

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. Over n' out."

"Girl shot in Tehran."

The Persiankiwi twitter lists updates of police movements and arrests: "Our street is quiet now -- we cannot move tonight but must move asap when dawn starts."

Iranians are limited in what they see on television or hear on the radio regarding the extent of the outrage over Ahmadinejad's reelection in disputed balloting last week. They are navigating in a vacuum sealed by a security-force crackdown. But footage of burning cars, masked boys and bloodied protesters is playing across the Middle East, captivating Arab countries where repressive regimes have for years been arresting their own political bloggers and cyberspace dissidents.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni nations have tense relations with Ahmadinejad and Shiite-led theocracy controlling Iran. But they don't want the protests in Iran to ignite similar democratic fervor in their countries, especially the merging of the Internet, texting and Facebook with a potent opposition leader.

So far, that has yet to happen. Egyptian activists, for example, have over the last year called for rallies and strikes on Facebook and Twitter, but they have no galvanizing personality and are not organized enough to pose a threat to a police state controlled by President Hosni Mubarak.

Iran is offering an intriguing glimpse into how years of disillusionment can suddenly leap from cafes and university campuses to a national revolt where dueling political voices and agendas square off amid banners, rhetoric and allegations of election fraud. It is a mix of political activism, democratic expression and shorthand typed in tight grids of letters and numbers onto screens large and small.

"I don't think similar events could even take place in Egypt or other Arab countries," said Ibrahim Issa. The editor of the Cairo independent Al Dustour, Issa has been arrested a number of times for criticizing the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "We hope and we always keep faith that what's happening in Iran could push Arabs to try and do the same against their oppressive regimes. But reality tells us that this is not applicable. We are comparing 30 years of what I can call Iranian democracy to 30 years of Egyptian tyranny."

The Iranian elections have "imposed themselves on everything. The masses of young men, the noticeable presence of young women -- especially female university students -- and the slogans of change, the intense competition that raged," Mohammad Hussein Yusifi wrote in the Kuwait daily Awan. "All these factors left us no possibility but to observe closely what is happening on the Iranian scene."

The characters in that tumult, appearing amid videos of tear gas and police swinging batons, have provided alluring narratives: presidential challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi, whose Facebook fan group has about 50,000 members, standing amid throngs of his supporters; Ahmadinejad proclaiming victory and calling for calm; and the hovering visage of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Each is mentioned on Twitter missives bristling with rumors and innuendo about what might happen next.

But sometimes things go blank. Today, one writer on Persiankiwi, which has nearly 19,000 followers, posted this: "I must log off now -- will log on when I have more info -- need phone line -- no mobile cover, no sms, no satellite, no radio."

Similar difficulties also are encountered by international media organizations. Teymoor Nabili, a reporter for Al Jazeera, wrote on the network's website: "Day-by-day our ability to access any information has been slowly whittled away. . . . I am no longer allowed to take a camera out into the streets. I'm not even sure I can walk out into the streets with a mobile phone without getting into trouble."

Activists and bloggers watching developments in Iran from afar say the protests show the promise and limits of technology in orchestrating the kind of social unrest seen in Tehran. There is also the sentiment that Iranian activists rising up against a hard-line, anti-Western regime enjoy more international support than their counterparts in Arab countries where anti-democratic governments are close U.S. allies.

"A cyber war and its bloggers [can't] carry out a revolution or overthrow a certain regime on its own. This will never happen, not in Iran, Egypt or anywhere else in the world. Bloggers never promised that they can change political systems," said Wael Abbas, a blogger and human rights activist in Egypt. "Full revolution has to come from the masses in the streets."

The massive street rallies and placards in Tehran make Issa, the Cairo editor, envious. "The current Egyptian system was built on fraud while the Iranian revolution was built by the people, and that is why they are fighting for such a system," he said. "The bottom line is that, unlike Iran, we are politically dead."

Some columnists in the Arab world believe -- like they view many issues in the region -- that the protests in Iran are influenced by American foreign policy. The thinking goes that Iran's Islamic leadership remains divided over how to respond to conciliatory gestures by the Obama administration. One side wants to open up to Washington to enhance Iran's stature and protect its regional interests.

"But another camp believes that the U.S. has not and will not abandon the aim of toppling the regime," wrote Sa'd Mehio in the United Arab Emirates' daily Al Khaleej. "If violence does not do it, as the Bush administration was planning to do, then diplomacy and temptations might do it, as the Obama administration is currently doing. In addition, some sectors of this camp are genuinely concerned about the negative repercussions of this dialogue on the Iranian Revolution's ideological coherence."

Iran's revolutionary spirit has been unbottled again. And for the Arab world, it is a lesson in resistance and a maturing democracy that may be controlled by clerics but is expressing its will in the streets and in blips of Twitters and tweets.