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Protests in Iran Shatter Image of a United Country

Jamie Dettmer

   The outrage was aired first of all on social media forums -- before
   spilling chaotically on to the streets with Saturday's mass protests
   catching Iranian authorities off-guard and exposing how many Iranians
   hold the country's embattled regime in disdain.

   After three days of public denials, the confession Saturday by the
   Iranian military that it was behind last week's downing of a Ukrainian
   airliner sparked fury and demands for the country's supreme leader,
   Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to resign.

   The belated admission -- after days of denials -- of the unintentional
   shooting down of the passenger jet, and Khamenei's promise the culprits
   will be punished, appears not to have stanched a flood of anger that
   broke through the narrow limits of criticism Iranian authorities allow.
   Saturday's protests come weeks after Iran faced the country's bloodiest
   unrest since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Dozens are thought to have
   been killed.

   Videos posted on social media showed hundreds of mainly young people
   gathering to protest at several universities in the Iranian capital.
   They had come ostensibly to honor the 176 who died when the Iranian
   military accidentally shot down the airliner, apparently mistaking it
   for a U.S. cruise missile.

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