Iranians hold an anti-US rally in Tehran as elsewhere opposition protestors gather Tehran faces anti-US protests & opposition protests
Iran police clash with demonstrators in Tehran
DUBAI (Najah Mohammed Ali)
Iranian police fired teargas and made several arrests during clashes with opposition supporters who staged demonstrations in central Tehran on Wednesday, witnesses said.The clashes took place in central Tehran's Haft-e-Tir square where groups of opposition supporters had gathered for a protest, even as thousands of Iranians were staging an anti-American rally outside the closed U.S. embassy to mark the 30th anniversary of the storming of the compound by Islamist students.Witnesses said police beat the opposition supporters, still angry at the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June, in a bid to break up the rally but the crowd of several hundred refused to move.
Iranian police fired teargas and made several arrests during clashes with opposition supporters who staged demonstrations in central Tehran on Wednesday, witnesses said.The clashes took place in central Tehran's Haft-e-Tir square where groups of opposition supporters had gathered for a protest, even as thousands of Iranians were staging an anti-American rally outside the closed U.S. embassy to mark the 30th anniversary of the storming of the compound by Islamist students.Witnesses said police beat the opposition supporters, still angry at the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June, in a bid to break up the rally but the crowd of several hundred refused to move.
Iranians protest in Tehran
Huge crowds surrounded the embassy complex, chanting slogans such as "Death to America" and "Death to Israel."They also smashed up posters of the American "Uncle Sam" symbol and chanted "The blood in our veins is a gift to our leader" -- a reference to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.Opposition leaders Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi have urged their supporters to take to the streets to stage protests against the government of Ahmadinejad.Iran's Revolutionary Guards and its allied Basij militia have warned the opposition to avoid using any anti-U.S. rally to revive protests against the clerical establishment after June's disputed presidential election.The unrest that erupted after the vote was the worst in Iran in the past three decades."Hundreds of police, riot police, Basij militia and plainclothes are in the main squares," a witness said.Another witness said dozens of police were walking around the British embassy in central Tehran."Dozens of police and Basij forces are around the Russian embassy as well," the witness said.Some reformist websites have called on people to gather outside the Russian embassy, in an apparent protest at Moscow's recognition of Ahmadinejad's re-election on June 12.
Students in Tehran tear posters of Obama as he becomes new president of the United States
Anti-western rallies usually take place outside the old U.S. embassy -- now called the "den of espionage" in Iran -- to mark the anniversary.U.S. President Barack Obama said earlier that Iran "must choose" whether to open the door to opportunity and prosperity."We have heard for thirty years what the Iranian government is against; the question, now, is what kind of future it is for," Obama said in a statement marking the 30th year since the storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran."It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity and justice for its people."Iranian militants stormed the embassy on Nov. 4, 1979, and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.Some leaders of the student militants who seized the U.S. embassy shortly after Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, along with dozens of moderate political figures, have been imprisoned since the election in June.In September, opposition demonstrators clashed with government backers and police at annual pro-Palestinian rallies.The authorities deny vote rigging, and have portrayed the unrest as a foreign-backed bid to undermine the Islamic state.
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