All Blog Posts from World Watch

Iranians are bracing themselves for more street violence Wednesday, reports CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer.

The country's reform movement intends to demonstrate outside Parliament tomorrow to protest the swearing-in of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (left) for a second term as President. Reformers believe he stole victory in a rigged election on June 12, and has no right to take office.

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The father of a 24-year-old Iranian arrested during an election demonstration claims his son, seen left, was killed in Evin prison, according to a report on the Human Rights Activists News Agency's Persian Website.

Ali Javadi says his son, Amir Javadi Langroudi, was injured by the Basiji militia during a July 18 demonstration. According to Javadi, his son was taken to Evin prison after recovering from his injuries in the hospital. Some time after the transfer, Javadi says he was called by prison officials and told to come pick up his son's body.

In a letter, Javadi says: "My son who had just lost his mother was far from the political currents and only was in love with his country."

Iranian opposition protesters clashed with security forces in Tehran Friday in largest showing of strength since the regime cracked down on election demonstrations last month.

Sparked by the sermon of Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a powerful cleric widely believed to be sympathetic to opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered, chanted and marched through Tehran's streets.

Here are some images and videos of the day's events:

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Protesters against the recent Iranian election are calling for marches tomorrow, the 10th anniversary of a bloody confrontation in which thousands of students, protesting the regime's shutdown of a popular reformist newspaper, were attacked, beaten and arrested.

The clashes began on 18 Tir (July 9) in 1999 when government security stormed a university dormitory. Several students were reportedly killed; scores more were beaten and hospitalized.

In the days following as many as 10,000 students marched in protest of the crackdown (left), with skirmishes between protestors and conservative factions erupting in Tehran and other cities. At least 1,000 students were reportedly arrested in what was up to then the largest demonstration of unrest since the 1979 Revolution.

To mark the 10th anniversary, the Web site yekiran.com lists rallies scheduled to be held on Thursday in 30 Iranian cities.

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On May 4, 1970 members of the Ohio National Guard killed four students and wounded nine others at Kent State University. Some of the students were protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. Others in the line of fire were just seeing what was going on, or walking to their classes. Photos of the event in newspapers and television galvanized the nation and inflamed the anti-war movement in the U.S., although the Vietnam War did not end for another three years.

Yesterday, a young woman who was part of the crowd in Tehran, either protesting or simply watching the events unfold, was shot in the chest, apparently by Iranian Basiji security forces on rooftops. Her death was recorded on video, and the gruesome end of her life sped digitally and virally around the world on social media sites, such as YouTube and Facebook. It awaits to be seen how much more quickly her death may affect an historic change.

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Despite the Guardian Council's recent suggestion that a partial recount of the disputed Iranian presidential election's ballots may be conducted, an Iran expert said that a re-run of the election is the only way to restore confidence in the government.

Ali Ansari, director of the Institute of Iranian Studies at St. Andrews University, believes there's little point recounting the results of a foregone election.

He shared analysis about the Iranian elections at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London this morning.

Ansari said Iran's leadership remains divided about how to proceed, making statements designed to quell public unrest even as it allows police brutality on the streets of Tehran.

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Twenty years ago – before Twitter, before Facebook and even before the Internet was widely used at all – anti-government protests broke out in China. Though the grievance was different, the participants were similar: students, intellectuals and young people who took to the streets to demand reform. And in Beijing, as in Tehran, some of them ended up dead.

There are no clear numbers on how many died in the Tiananmen Square massacre, but it is believed to be in the thousands – far more than have been killed so far in Iran. Yet the government was essentially successful: The regime stayed in power, dissidents were arrested, and limits on free speech became even more deeply ingrained in the culture.

Could they have done the same today? The Iranian government has similarly tried to censor media coverage, yet the world has had access to an intimate and immediate accounting of the protests, the subsequent killings and the palpable anger in Tehran's streets. And while the situations are not identical, it's certainly notable that after initially backing the election results, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei changed course and said there would be an investigation.

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Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has cancelled a planned trip to Iran next Tuesday, prompting speculation that he is responding to rapidly-mounting criticism of his long absence from the country just when his presence is needed the most.

His latest trip out of the country — now almost three weeks long — has taken place just as the Army unleashed a war against Taliban militants in the northern Swat valley, displacing at least 1.5 million people.

Zardari's critics have used his absence during the growing security and humanitarian crisis in their attacks on him, writes CBS News' Farhan Bokhari.

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Less than a week after the Oscar broadcast showed Hollywood embrace the Bollywood-influenced "Slumdog Millionaire," luminaries from the American film industry travelled to Iran to talk about world cinema.

Sid Ganis, president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and eight other well-known Hollywood figures arrived in Tehran on Friday, reports CBS News' Leily Lankarani.

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Iran's Parliament has voted to allow widows to inherit land from their husbands, the latest in a series of tentative moves by Iranian legislators to expand the rights of women in the conservative Islamic Republic. If approved, the bill approved last week will alter Iran’s 76-year-old civil code, which was written by a committee of clergy and experts according to Islamic rules that prohibit widows from inheriting their husbands’ real estate.

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