Events in Egypt continued to unfold in Iran

Washington Post, Developments in Egypt have continued to unfold since President Hosni Mubarak stepped down from power on Friday:

Police officers, ambulance drivers, bankers, journalists and archaeologists marched through the streets of Cairo in separate protests Monday. Emboldened by a sudden burst of freedom that has flowered since Mubarak's departure Friday, the demonstrators demanded higher wages and other benefits.

"This is our ideal chance to make our voices heard," said Ahmed Mahmoud, a manager at a state-owned bank. "You would never see these kind of protests before, not when we had a dictator."

The military council responded with a communique in which it urged Egyptians to go back to work, saying the stoppages were harming the country's security and economy. The council imposed martial law Sunday, and officials hinted that they would ban strikes if things did not improve.

"Honorable Egyptians regard these demonstrations, which are taking place at a critical moment, as leading to negative consequences," read the communique, the fifth handed down by the military council since last week.

The events in Egypt are reverberating elsewhere in the region:

Iranian hard-liners called Tuesday for the arrest or execution of opposition leaders involved in Monday's street protests, as gatherings of Egypt-inspired demonstrators in Bahrain and Yemen again resulted in bloodshed.

Violent protests erupted in all three countries Monday as the revolutionary fervor unleashed by the toppling of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak rippled across the Middle East, propelling people onto the streets to demand change from a spectrum of autocratic regimes.

In Tehran, at least one person was killed during the banned opposition rally, officials told the student news agency ISNA on Tuesday. The demonstration was the largest in Iran since a crackdown on the opposition 14 months ago.

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Israel is keeping a watch on its neighbors in the region with a hopeful eye. As the AP reported:

Israel's deputy prime minister said the Middle East remains in "the eye of the storm" after the toppling of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.

Dan Meridor, who is also Minister of Intelligence and Atomic Energy, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Prague on Tuesday that Egyptian protesters' demands for freedom and free election were positive.

"What we saw in Egypt is a unique development," Meridor said. "The slogans in the square were mostly from the western dictionary, not from the Muslim dictionary. They were about freedom, about liberties, about free elections, so they were positive."