Why Iran's Twitter Revolution Is Unique

Photo: A woman wearing an Iranian flag uses a mobile phone on the streets of Tehran on Tuesday. Reuters

From The Christian Science Monitor:

The government's tight control of the Internet has spawned a generation adept at circumventing cyber roadblocks, making the country ripe for a technology–driven protest movement.

Istanbul, Turkey - Before Iran, there was Moldova, which had its own (unsuccessful) "Twitter Revolution" back in April, when young activists used online tools to coordinate protests against the country's dubiously reelected Communist government. In Egypt, meanwhile, a new generation of activists has come to embrace Facebook and Internet-based social networking applications to protest (again, mostly unsuccessfully) their repressive government.

But new-media experts say that Iran's civil resistance movement is unique because the government's tight control of media and the Internet has spawned a generation adept at circumventing cyber roadblocks, making the country ripe for a technology–driven protest movement.

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My Comment: The genie is out of the lamp. Even when this movement is crushed in the next week or two, Iranian dissidents and the young will use the power and influence of the internet to spread their message, to communicate to the outside world, to plan, and to organize. The mullahs and their theocracy is doomed .... but how long this is going to take and at what cost is something that I do not know.