Hey Where Did This Massive Protest Come From, Anyway?

The Iranian Interior Ministry threatened a major crackdown today should people show up for any massive protests or anything.

Naturally, this means tens of thousands of Iranians decided to protest in Tehran's Revolution Square.

Many tens of thousands of Iranians chanted support for Mirhossein Mousavi in Tehran on Monday after a presidential election they say was stolen from him and handed to the hardline incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest), they converged on Revolution Square, where Mousavi addressed a small part of the crowd through a loud hailer and held his fists clenched above his head, in a sign of victory, after two days of the capital's most violent unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The gathering, which took place in defiance of an Interior Ministry ban, was a reply to Ahmadinejad's government-organized victory rally, which also drew vast crowds on Sunday.

Supporters stretching along several kilometers of a Tehran boulevard waved green flags, Mousavi's campaign colors, and held portraits of him aloft as they tried to take pictures on their cellphones -- even though his words could not be heard above the noise of the crowd.

Iran's state television said Mousavi, looking smiling and relaxed in a striped shirt, had said he was ready in case the election was re-run.

"Mousavi, take back our votes," the marchers chanted before Mousavi appeared, along with other pro-reform leaders who backed his call for Friday's election result to be overturned.

The disputed election has dismayed Western powers trying to induce the world's fifth-biggest oil exporter to curb nuclear work that they suspect is for bomb-making, a charge Iran denies.

Indeed, the wearing of the green in support of Mousavi today has gone somewhat global. Is this the beginning of a new beginning, or the beginning of the end?

[UPDATE] The UK Guardian newspaper is putting the crowd at over 100,000.