By Steve Clemons

(photo credit: Madyar in Iran — check out the other amazing photos at Madyar’s blog) This is a picture of a massive pro-Mousavi rally in Esfehan, Iran’s third largest city.

Along the lines of Iran President Ahmadinejad denying the Holocaust, the Ahmadinejad-appointed president of the University of Tehran stated today that there was no attack on university students and no students killed. Outrageous. Via Nico Pitney at Huffington Post, a video has now been posted from the beginning of one frightening attack (pasted above).

I really, really hope that after the Brits go through their upcoming Tory phase that they are smart enough to make British Foreign Secretary David Miliband their ‘next next prime minister’.

I am really proud of Senator John Kerry for getting out into the public sphere and explaining to Americans that the US needs to be cautious and nuanced at this fragile moment in Iran’s political course. Barack Obama was wrong to comment at all in his offhanded comparison of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

Politico‘s Patrick Gavin (who is editing Michael Calderone’s column this week) reports and I have confirmed that Dan Froomkin’s invaluable White House Watch blog has been discontinued at the Washington Post. Froomkin was the new media hybrid of Woodward and Bernstein during the George W.

Ahmadinejad’s militias are beating up students and ransacking the universities. . .

NPR’s Mark Memmott reports on leading human rights attorneys and activists

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry has a very sensible piece in the New York Times today. Kerry gets the strategic issues between the US and Iran — but he also understands that what is happening in the streets of Tehran matters.

According to my friend and colleague, Afshin Molavi, Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s decision to call for a massive “mourning” day honoring those who have died during the election protests sends a powerful political message to Iran’s citizens linking back to the Iranian Revolution 30 years ago.

This is a guest note written by an anonymous student in Tehran. Sent to The Washington Note at 3:50 am on 17 June 2009. So long as the “process” is underway with the Guardian Council I don’t foresee things spinning way out of control. What happened in Azadi, the shootings, wasn’t systematic.