That’s all good. But at this critical juncture in the U.S.-Israeli relationship, words are less important than actions. The president needs to show his support for Israel in tangible ways, both in public and behind the scenes. There can be no equivocation, no cool detachment, no mixed signals. Israel’s enemies and, indeed, the rest of the world need to understand that the United States and Israel stand together in the battle against global terrorism.

Nothing would please the world’s terrorists and terrorist sponsors more than the prospect of a bitter split between the U.S. and Israel. Since 2009, many have observed, the Obama White House has been tougher on Jerusalem than it has been on Teheran. That perception, whether justified or not, has to stop, now. Nobody should have any reason to doubt America’s support for Israel, and for the decisions that Israel will have to make about its own national security.

Washington must remind the world that Iran’s religious and secular leaders, including its grand ayatollah, have pledged themselves—in public—to Israel’s destruction. This sort of rhetoric would be condemned and sanctioned if it emanated from a European or Asian capital. But Iran’s leaders regularly and consistently make it clear that if they had the means, they would wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

Nobody can doubt that Iran’s leaders are intent on building a nuclear weapon, and if they succeed, who can doubt that the ayatollahs will use the weapon to target Israel? That’s why the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran is, as Mr. Obama stated, intolerable.

So the questions become: What to do, and when to do it?

Like any other nation, Israel will act as it sees fit to defend its national security and its civilian population. Mr. Obama, with some justification, told the AIPAC gathering that loose talk about an attack on Iran could be counterproductive. He might be right: Over the weekend, followers of Iran’s grand ayatollah—a man who makes the country’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seem reasonable—scored a big victory in the nation’s parliamentary elections. Tensions with the Israel, the U.S. and the West certainly played into the ayatollah’s hands.

An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is not, in fact, inevitable, although Mr. Netanyahu rightly noted in his own speech to AIPAC that Israel will not stand idly by if Teheran persists in building a weapon of mass destruction. Israel remains skeptical about the power of diplomatic and economic sanctions, with good reasons—sanctions are a rational response to a crisis, but Iran’s leaders clearly are not rational. Nevertheless, time has not yet run out on diplomacy. But the diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran must be effective, indeed, it must be crushing, and it is up to the Obama White House to take the lead.

That course of action will require more than platitudes from Washington. It will require determination and passionate belief. It remains to be seen if Mr. Obama can summon those qualities on behalf of Israel—and, by extension, on behalf of American security as well.

There are, however, occasional and welcome moments of clarity, even in times of turmoil, when Americans and Israelis alike recall that they bound together inescapably, and that enemies of one are invariably the enemies of the other. Such moments bring both capitals together, regardless of the government of the day, and remind fair-minded people in both nations that our strategic interests overlap far more often than they diverge.

The dangerously unstable leaders of Iran rarely achieve anything that might be described as positive. But their attempts to build nuclear weapons have provided the U.S. and Israel with one of those moments when both nations realize the imperative of working together.

A recent article in The New York Times showed just how important, and effective, the American-Israeli partnership can be. The Times' piece described how Americans and Israelis successfully developed a computer worm that disabled a significant portion of Iran's nuclear centrifuges. While this important victory has not destroyed Iran's nuclear capabilities, it certainly qualifies as a setback.

Officials in the U.S. and Israel have had nothing to say about the worm, but the Times piece noted that experts from both countries have been working together in the Negev desert for two years in an effort to disable Iran's nuclear program from afar. While both nations--and the rest of the civilized world--still have to figure out how to thwart Iran for good, the Negev project has bought needed time. Israeli experts figure that Iran is now at least four years away from building a nuclear weapon.

The U.S. and Israel have made it clear that the madmen who run Iran should not and will not have access to nuclear weapons. Officials in Washington and Jerusalem may grumble and gripe about each other, but on this vital issue, they speak with one voice. The world should be grateful that they do.

The best selling book author goes on to highlight some of the hyperbole lauded on these new services. He quotes Mark Pfeifle, a former national security advicer who said Twitter should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. "Without Twitter the people of Iran would not have felt empowered and confident to stand up for freedom and democracy," wrote Pfeifle.

Gladwell sees this mostly as lazy, self aggrandizing journalism from bloggers like the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan. He quotes Golnaz Esfandiari, who wrote in Foreign Policy this June that, "Simply put: There was no Twitter Revolution inside Iran. Western journalists who couldn't reach-or didn't bother reaching-people on the ground in Iran simply scrolled through the English-language tweets post with tag #iranelection," she wrote. "Through it all, no one seemed to wonder why people trying to coordinate protests in Iran would be writing in any language other than Farsi."

When you're asking people to contribute only a little, writes Gladwell, these online services can be very powerful tools. But this is different than the kind of sacrifice required for real change. "Some of this grandiosity is to be expected. Innovators tend to be solipsists," Gladwell write. "But there is something else at work here, in the outsized enthusiasm for social media. Fifty years after one of the most extraordinary episodes of social upheaval in American history, we seem to have forgotten what activism is."

Gladwell is right that a lot of the rhetoric around social media activism is inflated and self serving. But he's wrong to imply that a network of weak ties can't accomplish serious change. One could argue, for example, that social media played a crucial role in electing our first black president, a historic moment in our nation's struggle for equality.

The tower gained its notoriety after federal authorities took steps to seize it in early November as part of what could end up being one of the largest counterterrorism land seizures ever by the U.S. government. The tower is now dealing with a nasty public-relations trial, and it remains to be seen how it will affect tenants and rents alike.

An amended complaint filed by the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York on Nov. 12 seeks forfeiture of the 60 percent stake in 650 Fifth that a nonprofit organization called the Alavi Foundation holds, and alleges that Alavi funnels funds to the Iranian government–controlled Bank Melli. Legal procedure requires the landlord to post notice of the complaint in the building.

Bank Melli, which originated the mortgage and loans for construction costs of 650 Fifth, has been the primary recipient of rent generated from it since its construction. (Bank Melli later canceled the mortgage debt in a strange transaction with shell companies and Alavi.) As the Associated Press reports, “Bank Melli has been accused by a U.S. Treasury official of providing support for Iran’s nuclear program, and it is illegal in the United States to do business with the bank.” There is also a complaint against former Alavi president Farshid Jahedi on charges of obstruction of justice, for allegedly destroying documents that linked 650 Fifth to Bank Melli.

THE MODERN TOWER, made entirely from light brown granite, was designed by John Carl Warnecke and Associates, and erected for the Pahlavi Foundation (the Shah’s personal charitable group) in 1978. It replaced the DePinna’s department store, a sort of Brooks Brothers retailer between 51st and 52nd streets, that went out of business in 1969.

The Pahlavi Foundation, set up in 1973, was sued by Iran’s then-new revolutionary government in 1979, because the Shah had allegedly funneled $1 billion in oil revenue to it before being overthrown. The suit sought the Shah’s assets, including the Piaget Building. It went to the Supreme Court, where, in 1985, a ruling by the New York Court of Appeals was upheld, on grounds that the U.S. had no jurisdiction.

The building’s ownership then becomes unclear, although the Iranian government did take control of the Alavi Foundation (through political, not legal, means), according to the U.S. attorney’s complaint.

Though now nearly 25 percent vacant, 650 Fifth did sport classy tenants such as Citigroup, Mistral Equity Partners, Tower Capital Asset Management, Paradigm Global Advisors, Broadmark Capital and Sterling National Bank. Upmarket clothier Juicy Couture rents retail space. North American Watch, exclusive distributors of Piaget watches, rented in 650 Fifth until at least 1982, according to public tax documents. Piaget later became Movado Group and moved up the street in 1996 to 730 Fifth.

The reason Piaget and others sought space in the Plaza district gem is its abiding quality: location. As The New York Observer’s Dana Rubinstein reported, amenities are not what allow the building to command the rents it does. “It’s always been a fair building,” said Mark Weiss, Newmark Knight Frank vice chairman. “Never any better than that, but in a very good location.” Robert Emden of PBS Real Estate says that ownership concerns have cast a shadow over the property, which, though technically Class A, was not always thought to be in great shape.

Then the ownership concerns became very real.

In December 2008, an original complaint sought the 40 percent interest that Assa Corp., a shell company, held in the Piaget Building. Now the feds have the evidence to seize the larger portion owned by Alavi, apparently. The amended complaint alleges that proceeds from violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 50 U.S.C. §§ 1701 are forfeitable. (The act is used by presidents to stem financing of states and individuals considered a threat to the U.S., and Iran’s on that list.) Federal authorities also sought forfeiture of four mosques, including one in Queens, and other properties, from Virginia to California, that are also owned by Alavi. The properties are Alavi’s only revenue.

After the 1979 fall of the Shah, the Pahlavi Foundation’s leadership abruptly changed, according to the complaint. The foundation was known by various names, but became the Alavi Foundation in 1989, when it bought the building in a partnership with two shell companies—Assa Corp. and Assa Co. Ltd.—and the mortgage originally provided by Bank Melli was canceled. Assa Co. Ltd., an entity incorporated in the U.K.-controlled Channel Islands, is “owned by Iranian citizens who represent the interests of Bank Melli,” according to the complaint. The Alavi Foundation states on its Web site that it “receive[s] most of our money from the rental income of an office building in Manhattan.”

THE PIAGET BUILDING has been a plump cash cow for whoever gets the checks. Tucked in the heart of the Fifth Avenue corridor, the address’ marketability had been nearly indestructible for more than a quarter-century.

One Great Recession and a brush with rogue-state financing have changed that.

Though nothing should change for tenants if the asset is seized, vacancy in 650 Fifth Avenue has jumped from 14.1 percent to 24.2 percent, according to CoStar, since the original complaint was filed last December. Tenants will not be asked to leave anytime soon, if ever, according to assurances from the U.S. attorney’s office. The building has 81,000 vacant square feet and another 40,000 square feet of leased space being marketed for release or sublease, according to CoStar.

The U.S. attorney’s office has made it clear that the tenants are not at fault, despite having perhaps unwittingly bankrolled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. “[They] remain free to use the properties as they have before today’s filing. There are no allegations of any wrongdoing on [their] part,” said Yusill Scribner, a spokesperson for the litigators.

In the event of forfeiture, the U.S. marshall would resell the building, and the tenants’ rights would be decided according to the terms of their lease. An entity would be appointed to maintain the property during the sale. Tenants and brokers are tight-lipped about the situation. Jones Lang LaSalle, the building’s listing agent, did not return phone calls. The Web site MrOfficeSpace.com shows at least four full floors available for rent.

Fifth Avenue has been hit hard by the recession, with resident retailers like Fendi, Gucci, Tiffany & Co. and Prada being replaced by the likes of Abercrombie & Fitch and Spanish bargain Banana Republic chain Zara. But 650 Fifth had fared relatively well—emphasis on had.

“As a veteran, as an American, I’m appalled at the idea that the money we pay to the landlord might be funding this regime,” Peter Brown, a vice chairman at tenant Kurt Salmon, told The New York Observer in mid-November.

gvoien@observer.com

“It’s like a normal office building,” said Reggie Mathas, 54, an IT technician for Delta National Bank, which occupies the 26th floor. “I knew it was at one time owned by the Shah.”

But these days, the only foreign agents seem to be carpenters and air conditioning repairmen, who were waiting outside on Friday. (Although, one has to wonder, who needs air conditioning in November?)

Other tenants seemed unfazed by their office building being singled out by the U.S Attorney’s office.

“Everybody owns assets here. If they weren’t doing it here, they’d be somewhere else,” said an employee who declined to give his name.

Perhaps 650 Fifth’s most appealing feature is its threshold outside the entrance on 52nd Street, sheltered from the elements and spacious enough to accommodate neighbors. “It’s good for smoking,” said an employee visiting from 666 Fifth Avenue, which is across the street.

rli@observer.com

The U.S. Attorney’s office alleges that the Alavi Foundation and 650 Fifth Avenue Company, owners of the rust-colored granite skyscraper, at 52nd Street, have been transferring its revenues into the coffers of Bank Melli, an institution that the complaint alleges is controlled entirely by the Iranian government. That also means that Jones Lang LaSalle, the brokerage that, according to real estate database CoStar, handles leasing for the building, may have been in the employ of Tehran.

Jones Lang LaSalle did not immediately have a comment.

From top to bottom, the 35-story building is also home to: Integrated Media Solutions; Mistral Equity Partners; TGM Associates; Delta National Bank; L.E.K. Consulting; the Doris Duke Foundation; Tower Capital Asset Management; Paradigm Global Advisors; Hana Bank; Starwood Hotels; Toppan Printing; Ore Hill Capital; MBIA; Sterling National Bank; De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek; and Broadmark Capital.

Only Hana Bank, a Korean firm, and Kurt Salmon would comment for this story.

“We saw the news yesterday,” said Young Jeong, a bank spokesman. “We are reviewing the contract with the building owner... We have some years left until the maturity of the contract, so we are scanning our documents with our broker.”

Peter Brown, a vice chairman at Kurt Salmon, told The Observer that though the staff of the building and its maintenance were to his liking, "As a veteran, as an American, I’m appalled at the idea that the money we pay to the landlord might be funding this regime.”

COSTAR DESCRIBES THE BUILDING as Class A, meaning a top-tier office tower, but brokers who have some familiarity with the building said its main allure was always its location in the city’s most expensive office submarket: the Plaza District.

“The ownership position has always cast a cloud,” said Robert Emden, a principal at PBS Real Estate, who has done some work with tenants in the building. “You know, it was positioned when it was put up in the '80s to be a [Class] A building, but it never in my opinion attained that status for one reason; that was because of the reported ownership.”

Moreover, Mr. Emden said, “It’s not a building that can sell easily,” in part because the lobby was not up to snuff, though he said ownership has embarked on a renovation project for the lobby and elevators.

Mark Weiss, vice chairman of Newmark Knight Frank, described the building thusly: “It’s always been a fair building. Never any better than that, but in a very good location.”

An attorney for the Alavi Foundation, based at 500 Fifth Avenue, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

THE BUILDING'S HISTORY, AS outlined in great detail in the criminal complaint seeking to seize the Foundation’s assets, reads like something New York Times building chronicler Christopher Gray might write.

The Pahlavi Foundation, a non-profit operated by the Shah, built the tower in the 1970s, with financing from Bank Melli. Following the 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic established an entity called “the Bonyad Mostazafan,” whose purpose was to expropriate property, including that of the Shah and the Pahlavi Foundation, and then to manage it. In 1980, the Pahlavi Foundation was renamed "The Mostazafan Foundation of New York." And then, in 1989, the Alavi Foundation.

Some of the building’s earliest tenants included disgraced financiers Marc Rich--indicted, interestingly, for doing business with Iran during the hostage crisis--and Ivan Boesky, indicted for insider trading, according to two sources in the real estate industry. Also, in 1989, the Alavi Foundation and Bank Melli allegedly formed a partnership called 650 Fifth Avenue Company, in order to avoid federal taxes on the tower’s rental income, hiding the move with the creation of two shell companies, Assa Corp and Assa Co. Ltd.

In December 2008, the U.S. Attorney’s office filed a complaint seeking forfeiture of Assa Corporation’s 40 percent interest in 650 Fifth Avenue Company. In the amended complaint filed Thursday, the U.S. Attorney also seeks the 60 percent interest held by the Alavi Foundation.

drubinstein@observer.com

Appearing on several Sunday morning talk shows, Susan Rice, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, and David Axelrod, one of the president’s top advisers, stressed the same basic theme: that this month’s election shouldn’t dissuade the U.S. from trying to resolve the nuclear issue with Iran since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and not the president, is the real decision-maker in Tehran.

“That was the case before the election; it is the case now,” Rice said on CBS’s Face the Nation.

How and when the political situation in Iran will be resolved is anyone’s guess. The momentum for the street protest seemed to be wilting in the last few days, the result of the government’s merciless crackdown, but it seemed to pick up again on Sunday. At the same time, it’s also at least possible that, even if the protest movement fails, the Khamenei regime’s opponents could pull off a backdoor coup by enlisting clerical leaders in a bid to oust the Supreme Leader.

Still, the most likely outcome seems to be the simplest: the crackdown succeeds, the protests fizzle, the clerics slowly fall back into line, and the election stands. That is certainly the scenario the White House had in mind when it sent Rice and Axelrod onto the Sunday morning circuit. And if it is the scenario that unfolds, there will be domestic political risks for Obama in pushing ahead with diplomacy.

Here, a rough parallel can be drawn to George H. W. Bush and his response to the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989. The Chinese government’s vicious crackdown, much of it carried live on television, enraged an American public that had previously paid little attention to life in China. Confronted with such naked injustice, surely the president would use every means at his disposal to punish the Chinese government—right?

But that’s not what Bush, who had served as the U.S. ambassador to China in the mid-1970s, had in mind. He feared that imposing penalties, such as revoking China’s Most Favored Nation trade designation, would prompt the Chinese government to reverse the gradual (but significant) steps toward freedom and openness that it had taken in the decade leading up to Tiananmen. So he limited his comments to condemning the nature of the crackdown and otherwise took a largely hands-off approach.

This exposed Bush to domestic political attacks from Democrats almost identical to the ones that Republicans have launched against Obama over Iran. On Meet the Press a few days after Tiananmen, Tom Foley, then the speaker of the House, addressed Bush’s handling thusly: “There are people who feel we ought to speak out more loudly and more clearly. I think the president probably needs to do that. We are outraged as a country about the death sentences, about the suppression, and about the enormous big lie that the Chinese government is attempting to tell about this story.”

It would be wrong to say that Tiananmen is the reason Bush went on to lose his reelection bid in 1992. With no further uprisings after the June massacre, the media lost interest and so did most Americans, and just over 18 months later—after the 1991 Gulf War—Bush’s approval rating stood at 90 percent. So as unpopular as his handling of Tiananmen was, he certainly could have won reelection anyway.

But by taking the approach he did, Bush handed his political opponents a weapon, and they rarely missed an opportunity to beat him with it. In his 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton repeatedly savaged Bush for “molly-coddling of those brutal old men in China who turned the tanks on their own students at Tiananmen Square” and promised to end China’s Most Favored Nation status as president. And at their New York convention that summer, Democrats showcased veterans of the Tiananmen uprising on stage.

Voters in ’92 had long since stopped thinking about China on a regular basis, but they still had their memories of those awful, disturbing images from June ’89. With the economy dragging Bush’s poll numbers down and endangering his reelection prospects, reviving those memories provided Clinton and the Democrats with yet another indictment of his leadership. To most voters, Tiananmen had always been a simple moral issue: The Chinese government had behaved horrifically and Bush had never been as outraged as he should have been.

Obviously, the situation with Iran is not exactly the same. For one thing, the nuclear issue will keep Iran in the news for the foreseeable future, even if the crackdown succeeds and there are no more protests. And Obama (as Axelrod and Rice did Sunday) can try to frame any diplomatic overtures in terms that may be understandable to Americans who know of Iran only what they’ve seen and read in the last few weeks. If we don’t try to strike a deal, Obama can essentially say, this same government will end up with a nuclear weapon. This may buy him slack that Bush never enjoyed.

Still, to much of the public, the memories of the past two weeks will live on much like the memories of Tiananmen did 20 years ago. The reality is that Obama has taken a responsible course by refusing to inject himself into the Iranian drama. But when his opponents rekindle memories of this moment three years from now, will Americans see it that way?

Over the weekend, Neda Agha-Soltan, a 26-year-old Iranian woman, was shot and killed in the streets of Tehran, nearby clashes between pro-government militias and demonstrators. Her tragic final moments were captured on a cell phone video and soon disseminated rapidly across the Internet, transforming the young woman into an icon of the protests.

By Monday morning, the footage of Neda’s death had become an important international story. But how much of the graphic video could news producers use on TV? In the end, such decisions varied from network to network.

At ABC News, producers for World News Tonight With Charles Gibson illustrated Neda’s story using various photos from her Facebook page; a freeze frame from the YouTube video of her death; and some still photos from the street protests in Tehran. They did not show the video itself.

“There are plenty of disturbing images that we show—famine in Rwanda, genocide in Darfur, war in Iraq and Afghanistan—but there is a line,” said Jon Banner, the executive producer of World News. “We don’t show people on television at the moment of their death. That’s just something we don’t do.”

Mr. Banner said that mixing in some of the video of Neda’s death would have distracted viewers from getting to know her story. If, afterward, they wanted to see the footage, it was only a click away. “By telling our viewers that it’s on YouTube, anybody who is watching our broadcast could go and watch the video if they’re so inclined,” said Mr. Banner. “But that should be their choice. We shouldn’t force anybody to be watching that stuff, when clearly it is so disturbing.”

Over at CNN, when producers first got hold of the footage over the weekend, they initially shielded viewers from Neda’s bloody face. “We put a bubble over her face in the early stages, because it was so graphic,” said Parisa Khosravi, senior vice president of international news gathering.

But as time passed, the story began taking on a life of its own—particularly on social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, where the video of Neda’s death was posted over and over again. Eventually, CNN’s senior editor of Middle East affairs, Octavia Nasr, narrated a package for CNN about how the specific imagery of Neda’s death had become a rallying cry itself. 

“That’s when we used it without the bubble,” said Ms. Khosravi. “It was part of the story to show the video and say, ‘This is what has caused this incredible reaction.’”

Typically, the unobscured images of the video on CNN were prefaced with a warning. “We must warn you, her report contains extremely graphic video,” said Larry King when introducing the package on Monday night. “It is disturbing.”

At CBS News, producers at The Evening News With Katie Couric decided to include some of the video footage in their package on Neda’s death. During the more graphic parts of the video, however, they blurred out Neda’s bloody face.

“These things are gut calls by the executive producer and his team,” said Paul Friedman, senior vice president of CBS News. “They’re always kind of conscious about how at that hour, you have people of various ages with various sensibilities watching. If it’s not necessary to the story to show the most disturbing part of it, then why do it? In this case, they took out the parts where the blood was the most obvious.

“I think we did a good job of making the point that this image has become iconic, without being unnecessarily graphic,” he added. “Decent human beings will make different decisions based on their guts.”

fgillette@observer.com

The Huffington Post, Andrew Sullivan and Nate Silver are not the only ones. Anyone posting links to stories about the protests, putting an #iranelection hashtag on a Tweet, or embedding the YouTube video of Neda's death on their blog is an aggregator. They have "followers" and "friends" that are interested in what they are reading and listening to and watching.

With Web tools, we all have the power of the printing press, a radio transmitter, even a television production studio.

And now users, from Iranian protestors to participants in projects like Twitter Vote Report, want to be part of something bigger. This is sharing a scene, a photo, a link, or a story so that it can be gathered and generate a mass message--one that will empower people and maybe even enforce change. In other words, this isn't Twittering about your sandwich anymore!

On the Web, "every medium is right next door to every other medium," explained Clay Shirky, internet theorist, author and NYU professor, in a recent discussion for TED (Technology, Engagement, Design). "Media is increasingly less just a source of information, and is increasingly more a site of coordination because groups that see or hear or watch or listen to something can now gather around and talk to each other as well."

He has been thinking about how the history of media formed this new connected landscape and allowed for Iranians to subsume their regimes' messages to spread reports across the Web.

"The moment our historical generation is living through, is the largest increase in expressive capability in human history," he said.

He explained that it's obvious that this "new media revolution" was born from the Internet and its social networking tools. But he also noted that our "social norms," the communication habits ingrained in our psyche for centuries, have evolved.

Now that all media is digitized, from phone calls via Skype to radio shows by podcast to TV shows on Hulu, the Internet has become media's ultimate Swiss army knife for revolutionaries. "It's like you had a phone that could turn into a radio if you had the right buttons," he explained at his TED discussion. "Members of the former audience can also be producers and not consumers."

In the 20th century's media world, dominated by TV, radio, newspapers and movies, "the media that is good at creating conversations is no good at creating groups. And the media that is good at creating groups is no good at creating conversations," he said.

"Whereas the telephone gave us the one to one pattern, and television, radio, magazines, books gave us the one to many pattern, the Internet gives us the many to many pattern," he explained.

Case in point: today, on June 22, a photo shot by professional photographer Newsha Tavakolian illustrates a front page story in The New York Times: "Web Pries Lid of Censorship by Iranian Government."

Dozens of digital cameras freckle the photo, poking between Iranians flashing the peace sign.

In the article, Brian Stelter and Brad Stone wrote:

Iran’s sometimes faltering attempts to come to grips with this new reality are providing a laboratory for what can and cannot be done in this new media age — and providing lessons to other governments, watching with calculated interest from afar, about what they may be able to get away with should their own citizens take to the streets.

 

One early lesson is that it is easier for Iranian authorities to limit images and information within their own country than it is to stop them from spreading rapidly to the outside world. While Iran has severely restricted Internet access, a loose worldwide network of sympathizers has risen up to help keep activists and spontaneous filmmakers connected.

These activists are "connected," not just to each other, but the entire world through the Web. Their "connectedness" is probably why so many of them are taking the photo in the first place.