Does anyone have a hard number on today’s protest in Tehran?
Same event, wildly different numbers on the turnout. Al Jazeera: Tens of thousands of Iranians have rallied in the country’s capital in defiance of a government ban to protest against the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president. New York Times (hat tip to Kevin Drum): Hundreds of thousands of people marched in silence through central ...
Same event, wildly different numbers on the turnout.
Tens of thousands of Iranians have rallied in the country’s capital in defiance of a government ban to protest against the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president.
New York Times (hat tip to Kevin Drum):
Hundreds of thousands of people marched in silence through central Tehran on Monday to protest Iran’s disputed presidential election in an extraordinary show of defiance that appeared to be the largest demonstration in Iran since the 1979 revolution.
Andrew Sullivan’s Twitter sources:
There are reports of about 3m ppl out on the streets. Millions of people marching in absolute silence.
Size matters here. Tens of thousands is a serious but likely containable situation for Iran’s security forces. With millions, you’re talking about the potential for a repeat of something awful that happened about twenty years ago.
So, which data point do you trust?
AFP/Getty Images
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and the author of The Ideas Industry. Twitter: @dandrezner
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