An Iranian Icon on Today's Protests

Jamshid / Reuters A new wave of violent strife swept Iran on Thursday as thousands of demonstrators marched across the country to show outrage over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election. But baton-wielding police officers broke up the protests, firing tear gas at 200-300 people who were chanting "death to the dictator." Demonstrators wearing surgical masks to protect their identities from security cameras marched through the streets to Tehran University, a move they said commemorated the 10-year anniversary of student unrest there. The Daily Beast's Reza Aslan talks to Ahmad Batebi—a young Iranian who became a symbol of those student protests a decade ago and spent years in prison for it—about why today's protests are unstoppable.

Thursday is the 10th anniversary of the day Iranians refer to simply as 18 Tir. On that day in 1999, a group of students who had holed up in Tehran University for six days to protest the government’s closure of a major reformist newspaper, Salaam, were savagely attacked by paramilitary forces under orders from the Revolutionary Guard.

The protests were the biggest of their kind since the fall of the shah two decades earlier—though they have been dwarfed by this past month’s protests, which have swept through the whole of the country. The university students had been emboldened by then-President Mohammad Khatami’s reform agenda to demand greater rights, including the right to peaceful assembly and a free press. However, the regime, frightened by the spectacle, saw the student movement as a threat to the stability of the state. In what has now become a familiar sight, the government unleashed the full force of its security apparatus on the students.

Click Image to View Our Gallery of Today's Rally in Iran

Early on the morning of 18 Tir—the date according to the Iranian calendar—while most of the students were asleep, Basij forces raided the dorms of Tehran University, indiscriminately beating and arresting people. In the melee, a bullet whizzed by the ear of Ahmad Batebi, a young university student, and lodged itself in the chest of his friend. Batebi took his friend’s shirt off and used it to put pressure on the wound, but to no avail. He then ran to the front of the protests and held the shirt aloft for all to see, a witness to the massacre that had just taken place.

A photographer in the crowd snapped his picture. The next day, the image was splashed across the cover of The Economist and instantly became a symbol of the uprising: It was the lonely Chinese man standing before a phalanx of tanks at Tiananmen Square, or, more perhaps more fittingly, it was Neda Agha-Soltan slowly bleeding to death on the streets of Tehran, blood pouring from her mouth and nose.

The day after Batebi’s picture appeared, the police arrested him. He spent the next 10 years in prison, most of it in solitary confinement, in a cell the size of a bathtub. He was repeatedly tortured and forced to undergo a mock execution. The government wanted him to sign a statement saying the blood on the shirt was not blood at all—it was tomato sauce. Batebi refused.

After suffering two strokes, Batebi was temporarily released from prison in 2007 to receive medical attention. With the help of Kurdish militants, he fled Iran, smuggled first by car, then by donkey, through the mountains of Kurdistan into Iraq. He was granted asylum by United States in 2008 and now lives in Washington, D.C.

For 10 years, the government of Iran has allowed no commemoration of the events of 18 Tir. But this year, despite the brutal crackdown on protests, mass demonstrations have been planned, not only all over Iran, but all over the globe.

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the day that changed his life forever, and may yet prove a catalyst for change in Iran, The Daily Beast sat down with Ahmad Batebi.

Do you see parallels between the uprising that has rocked Iran over the last month and the student protests at Tehran University you took part in 10 years ago?

The 18 Tir uprising involved only students who were asking for greater freedoms of speech and the press. However, the current uprising in Iran is not made up only of students but of people from all parts of society. That has partly to do with how many people participated in this election. They all feel as though the government owes them something.

Perhaps the biggest difference between 1999 and 2009 is that the people are wiser and far more experienced at dealing with the regime. In 1999, we were hot and angry and unfocused. The protesters of today are much more calm and purposeful, more experienced. They know how to deal with the government, how to embarrass it through nonviolence and civil disobedience.