Clashes Erupt During Competing Deimnstrations in Iran lttp://www.washingtozçostconilwp-dyn/content/arficle/2009/09/18/AR...
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Rival Rallies Turn Violent in Tehran Aclwertisen'eni Y YourM Flere
Protest Is Opposition's Largest in 2 Months
By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 19, 2009
TEHRAN, Sept. 18 -- Hard-line supporters of President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clashed Friday with protesters who
defied a ban on opposition demonstrations to stage the first
major street protests in two months, a show of force during
an annual government-backed rally against Israel.
Pro-government demonstrators attempted to attack two
opposition leaders, former president Mohammad Khatami
and former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, at separate
protest sites in Tehran, but both escaped unharmed, news agencies and opposition Web sites reported. Two
other senior opposition figures, including influential Shiite Muslim cleric and former president Ali Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani, also appeared at the protests in a rare show of defiance against Iran's supreme leader,
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had warned the opposition not to dismpt Quds Day, the annual day of public
support for Palestinians.
More than 100,000 opposition supporters took to the streets in Tehran, and similar demonstrations were
reported in several other Iranian cities. Although the protesters were outnumbered by government supporters
observing Quds Day, it was the largest opposition turnout since mid-July, when protests against
Ahmadinejad's disputed victory in the June 12 presidential election ran into a fierce government crackdown.
In a speech at Friday prayers, Ahmadinejad denounced Israel and the West, questioned whether the
Holocaust had occurred and charged that it was a pretext for occupying Palestinian land.
The competing demonstrations turned violent after security forces intervened in the afternoon, and riots
empted at several locations in downtown Tehran, the state-mn Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Security forces initially seemed overwhelmed by the number of opposition supporters. Wearing green, the
campaign color of Mousavi, the leading opposition candidate in the presidential election, protesters gathered
along the main routes leading to the prayer venue and shouted slogans against the government.
As opposition supporters marched outside the gates of Tehran University's prayer ground, Ahmadinejad
defended Iran's total rejection of the Israeli state and called the Holocaust a “lie” and an “unprovable and
mythical claim.” Worshipers responded by shouting such traditional slogans as “Death to Israel” and “Death
to America.”
Outside the compound, anti-government demonstrators shouted, “Death to you.” There were also chants of
“Death to the dictator” and “Not Gaza, not Lebanon -- our life is for Iran,” a critical reference to the
Ahmadinejad government's support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon's
Hezbollah.
A week before Quds Day, Khamenei, Iran's top religious and political leader, had warned that the ceremonies
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Clashes Erupt During Competing Deimnstrations in Iran lttp://www.washingtozçostconi/wp-dyn/content/arficle/2009/09/18/AR...
must not be turned into an occasion for “discord and division.” The day of protest - - Quds is Arabic for
Jerusalem - - is observed in several countries but originated in Iran, where Islamic revolutionary leader
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini established it in 1979.
State television employees, doing live broadcasts on the official rally from Enghelab Street, pointed their
cameras at the ground as groups of anti-government demonstrators passed by, flashing victory signs and
shouting, “The resistance has not died; it's the government that has died.”
Staff writer William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.
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