N. A. FILIN Candidate of Historical Sciences Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences Keywords: Iran, presidential elections, protests, Green Movement, Twitter The presidential election in Iran on June 12, 2009 led to the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. After the announcement of the , the situation in the country became extremely tense. According large part of voters, Ahmadinejad became as a result of electoral fraud. Protesting supporters of the defeated opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi were very active . However, this was not the "Twitter revolution" as : their protests mainly on the streets. Most Iranians not have access to the Internet, and opposition rallies - online and on the streets- not synchronized. According to official data, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won with 62.63% (24.5 million votes), Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who took 2nd place, won with 33.75% (13.2 million).1. However, a large part of those who participated in the election refused to believe that Ahmadinejad - at that time the president and candidate of the ruling circles-actually received a majority of votes. After the polls closed, both leading candidates, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mir-Hossein Mousavi, claimed victory with 5860% of the total number of votes cast in their favor. Moreover, Mousavi immediately claimed that the election results could have been rigged.2 As a result, most of his supporters did not take the election results seriously. Popular demonstrations (mainly youth) began on June 13, 2009 throughout the country, but mainly covered such cities as Tehran, Tabriz, Qom, Isfahan, Mashhad, Shiraz, Ahvaz, Gorgan, Rasht, Babol, Zahedan Arak, etc. Supporters of the defeated reformist candidates participated in the actions. Their main demand is to review the voting results. ON THE STREETS AND IN SOCIAL NETWORKS The overwhelming majority of the protesters were convinced that the results were rigged. Most often, the oppositionists met with the question on the poster: "Where ... Read more