On Wednesday Dec 30th, a pro government rally held in Tehran. An estimation of the number of people attending the rally is done based on a photo by isna news agency and the area of the region were the rally happened. The area is calculated by the Google Earth software. The area of the region is 30000 square meter and given the degree of sparseness of people in the isna photo, the estimated number of people attending the rally is 20000 people.

The credit of this calculation goes to this blog: http://www.vastdl.com/tanz/?p=15&cpage=1#comment-15

I only translated it to English.


I should add that the rally was held in the Enghelab square which is a small square in comparison to many other bigger squares in Tehran. The government would have had no hope of gathering enough people to fill up those squares.

1. There were no danger for people to attend the rally (no beating with batons, gun shots, tear gas, etc). Instead they distributed fruit juice among the demonstrators.
2. The government had ordered the governmental companies to let people attend the rally. Many of the businesses belong to government. So people were not stuck at work.
3. The square were the rally was held was very easy to access from various parts of Tehran.
4. Everybody would know about it because it was advertised on the national TV and newspapers.

Given all these facts, 20`000 is the number of pro-government people in Tehran, including the Basij and the Sepah members! We have not considered the fact that the government has brought many people from other cities. Tehran`s population is 13`000`000 peaple!

Another interesting photo which has spread into internet is a screen shot of the national TV showing the rally. They usually show close views on TV to disguise the fact that they have few supporters, but apparently the camera man has made a mistake showing a top view. Judge for yourself:


Another point of this image is that the men and women are not walking together. Hence, they are not families. They are the Basij and Sepah members and people paid by the government to attend the shows! The government barely has supporters among the normal citizens.