Iran in Ferment: The Green Wave

In early May 2009, it looked as if incumbent Mahmoud Ahmedinejad would easily win a second term as Iran's president. Within just a few weeks, however, a popular movement known as the Green Wave picked up speed and carried opposition candidate Mir Hosein Musavi into an eagerly anticipated election day on June 12. The Wave surged into a tsunami of protest when authorities claimed that Ahmedinejad had beaten his rival—and with him the forces of reform—by a none-too-credible 63 to 33 percent. Now, the Green Wave must determine its future direction, particularly with regarding the question of centralized leadership. There is, however, reason to be optimistic: the Green Wave is indisputably the largest and broadest opposition gathering in the Islamic Republic's three-decade history, and it has galvanized Iran's massive younger generations like nothing before it.