Roozbeh, a 26-year-old university student in Tehran, considers himself a revolutionary. Never mind that he rarely leaves his room at his mother’s house. “Many people of my generation hate this regime,” he tells NEWSWEEK via Skype, asking that his last name be kept private. He says he spends 14 hours a day dodging government-imposed firewalls to share news with other Iranian cyberactivists inside and outside Iran. His strategy resonates with leaders of the country’s opposition Green Movement, who are now shunning street protests in favor of online organizing.
Roozbeh scares Iran’s current rulers. In public they deny it, of course, dismissing him and his allies as “losers with no significant power base,” in the words of Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But the mockery rings false: in fact, the Revolutionary Guards have grown worried enough to establish a Permanent Soft War Secretariat, dedicated to plugging what the Guards’ commander, Mohammad Ali Jafari, calls “the loopholes in our soft defense mechanism.” The massive demonstrations of 2009 have migrated behind closed doors, unseen by pro-regime Basij thugs, where activists spread the word of resistance via instant message, satellite television, and what authorities fear most: social networking.
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