The Persian Abyss: A new chapter in Iran's history

June 12th 2009 will go down as a turning point in the history of Iranians' awakening.

The race for the presidential election officially started three weeks ago. The reform movement had long been pronounced dead, following the inability of the former President Khatami to deliver on promises he had made. The reformists voters were expected to sit home.

The reformists could have easily been disqualified. They were allowed to stand, however, so that the presidential election would have a pretense of competition; so that the regime could claim legitimacy by luring people into participating. Ahmadinejad was expected to win.

Life in the Islamic Republic was moving along as it has been for the past several years. The young people of Iran were making the best out of the situation they were in. In South Tehran, they divided their time between praying in the mosques and taking puffs of their Opium bongs. In Northern Tehran, the youth divided their time between house parties with exuberant amounts of alcohol and TOEFL classes. Their only dream was to leave Iran.

And then a spark came and the whole of Iran was caught on fire.

The spark came in a televised debate between Ahmadinejad and the reformist candidate Mousavi. In this debate, Ahmadinejad accused all of the previous administrations in Iran of corruption.

More importantly, he set aside all Iranian social manners and took a virulent shot at Mousavi's wife, a respected academic, artist, and the designer of several sculptures in Teheran's main squares.

Iranians were outraged. An unprecedented wave of sympathy and support poured into the streets. Green, the color chosen by Mousavi's campaign, became the fashion of the season. Overnight, the stores in Iran were emptied of anything green.

In a matter of days, Mousavi managed to move into the position of the front runner. Hundreds of thousands of young people joined hands to form human chains across the capital in support of Mousavi, creating scenes unheard of since the revolution in 1979.

The election fever spread beyond the borders of Iran to the Iranian communities in exile. From Istanbul to London, from Los Angles to New York, the Iranians prepared to vote. It is as if everybody had been reminded, just in time, how terrible Ahmadinejad has really been.

An unprecedented number of people showed up to the ballot box. An astonishing 85% of those eligible cast their vote and anxiously awaited the results. All indications were that Mousavi had won the elections by a landslide.

An hour after the voting was over, Ahmadinejad is pronounced winner by the state media.

Iran was in a state of shock. Nobody believed this results. People poured into the streets and started chanting "Death to the Dictator." An Intifatha broke out in the streets of Teheran and many other major cities in Iran.

I called my 24-year-old cousin in Teheran who had just come back from a protest. "They are beating people mercilessly," she said. I tell her that I think protesting will not get them anywhere. "We know they are going to suppress us," she said. "We know they are going to re-install their man. But we want the whole world to know that this government is not legitimate."

Three weeks ago, a BBC correspondent wrote that anybody who has spent time in Iran recently knows that people are not in the mood for a regime change. Neither he, nor anybody else, could have predicted the turn of events in the past few days.

The currents guiding the Iranian national psychology have been developing for 2500 years. Most of the time they are just beneath the surface, invisible to both Iranians and foreigners. Occasionally, they break out creating an earthquake in the socio-political scene. This makes Iran one of the most unpredictable countries in the world.

Iranians of all ages, ethnicities and religions came out to vote because they believed that the only way to change the country was through slow reform within the parameters set by the regime.

June 12, 2009, will be remembered as the day that the hope was pronounced dead.