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Riot Police Attack Protesters in Iran

By WILLIAM J. KOLE and REBECCA SANTANA

posted: 1 HOUR 44 MINUTES AGO

comments: 6461

filed under: Iran, World News

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CAIRO (June 22) - Riot police cracked down anew on demonstrators in Iran's capital on Monday hours after the feared Revolutionary Guard threatened to crush any further post-election protests. A witness described an "air of sadness" marked by people wailing prayers into the night.

Security forces used tear gas and fired live bullets in the air to break up a group of about 200 protesters paying tribute to a young woman whose apparent shooting death was captured on video and circulated around the world, witnesses said.

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CNN.com: Iran's Election Fallout
Politics Daily: Where Are the Voices of Faith About Iran?
Also: 'Neda' Video Touches Nerve | GOP Slams Obama for 'Timid' Response

The show of force came as the country's highest electoral authority, the Guardian Council, acknowledged some irregularities in 50 districts — including more votes being cast than registered voters. But the council insisted the result of the June 12 presidential election was not affected.

The Guards' threat of "revolutionary confrontation" if the protests persist was another signal the regime is taking a zero-tolerance approach to Iran's worst civil unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered opposition supporters on Friday to halt their marches and respect the election outcome, saying President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won a resounding victory.

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Iran says at least 17 protesters have died in a week of unrest, including at least 10 killed in confrontations the day after Khamenei's speech.

Opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has alleged widespread and systematic fraud, issued his own challenge Sunday, telling supporters: "The country belongs to you ... Protesting against lies and fraud is your right."

Severe restrictions on reporters have made it almost impossible to independently verify reports on demonstrations, clashes and casualties. Iran has ordered reporters for international news agencies to stay in their offices, barring them from reporting on the streets.

In a statement on its Web site Monday, the Revolutionary Guard ordered demonstrators to "end the sabotage and rioting," calling the protests a "conspiracy" against Iran. It told demonstrators to "be prepared for ... revolutionary confrontation with the Guards, Basij and other security forces and disciplinary forces" if rallies continue. The Basij, a plainclothes militia under the Guard's command, has been blamed for some of the protesters' deaths.

Despite the warnings, some 200 people heeded a call on Persian-language blogs and Twitter feeds to rally Monday at Tehran's Haft-e-tir Square in memory of Neda Agha Soltan, the young woman shown on video as she apparently bled to death, and other "martyrs."

Witnesses told The Associated Press that helicopters hovered overhead as riot police fired live rounds and lobbed tear gas to break up the gathering.

Security forces ordered people to keep walking and prevented even small groups from gathering — at one point taking the extraordinary step of separating couples who emerged from a subway station, the witnesses said. They asked not to be identified for fear of government reprisals.

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An Iranian woman who lives in Tehran said there was a heavy police and security presence.

"There is a massive, massive, massive police presence," she told the AP in Cairo by telephone, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was worried about government reprisals. "Their presence was really intimidating."

"What you see is nothing (compared) to what is really happening," said the woman. "People are very, very despondent. There is an air of sadness around."

At night, she added, cries of "Allahu akbar!" or "God is great!" echo through Tehran, saying that was "the only way that they are able to express themselves."

The government has intensified a crackdown on independent media — expelling a BBC correspondent, suspending the Dubai-based network Al-Arabiya and detaining at least two local journalists for U.S. magazines.

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Britain, accused by Iran of fomenting post-election unrest, said Monday it was evacuating the families of diplomats and other officials based in Iran — the first country to do so.

President Barack Obama defended his cautious approach with Iran's leadership, and the White House said he was "moved" by televised images of the protests. But Republicans continued pressing him for a stronger response.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed dismay at the violence and urged "an immediate stop to the arrests, threats and use of force," U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said at U.N. headquarters in New York.

"He calls on the authorities to respect fundamental civil and political rights, especially the freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of information," Montas said.

An analysis of Iran's official election results released by the Chatham House think tank in London revealed anomalies that it said cast doubt on Ahmadinejad's victory.

Compared with the 2005 election, the outcome in a third of Iran's provinces would require that Ahmadinejad received support from all former centrist voters, all new voters and almost half of all former reformist voters. Chatham House called that an unlikely scenario.

Mousavi, who wants the election results annulled and a new vote held, vowed to keep up the rallies in defiance of Khamenei, who holds ultimate power in Iran. On his Web site Monday, he called on supporters to turn on their car lights as a sign of protest and warned of danger ahead.

Although Mousavi pledged to stand by the protesters "at all times," he said he would "never allow anybody's life to be endangered because of my actions" and called for pursuing fraud claims through an independent board.

Mousavi, a former prime minister, is a longtime supporter of the Islamic government and was himself labeled a hard-liner during the 1979 revolution. Reflecting his divided loyalties, he called the Basij and security forces "our brothers" and "protectors of our revolution and regime" — a possible attempt to make sure his supporters don't go overboard and challenge the essence of Iran's system of limited democracy constrained by Shiite clerics.

For nearly every Iranian — even those who were not yet born in 1979 — the Islamic Revolution is a watershed moment for the nation's psyche. Its supporters see it as Iran's break from foreign dominance and the dawn of its self-declared role as the world's champion of Islam. Yet others, including the many who fled the country, see it ushering in an era of clerical rule that brought international isolation and stifled freedoms at home.

Mousavi represents a middle ground. He supports the Islamic system but claims the early aspirations of the revolution — for elected officials to set the tone and clerics in a more advisory capacity — have been hijacked by leaders who put their will over the people's.

"Mousavi wants to change the system, but he doesn't want to overthrow the system. He wants to make it more flexible and more responsive to the people," said Ali Nader, an Iran specialist for the RAND Corp. think tank.

He said the Guard's crackdown threat was no surprise.

"They won't let these protests grow — this was the way the shah was brought down" in 1979, Nader said. But, he added: "Even if the protests peter out, you can expect a strong opposition movement in Iran."

The Guard, too, may be treading cautiously, Nader said. "If they do crack down too harshly, they risk their legitimacy and popular support," he said.

Associated Press Writers Sebastian Abbot and Brian Murphy in Cairo, and AP staff members in Iran contributed to this report.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

2009-06-20 06:36:40

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Calcontractor10

11:51 PMJun 23 2009

Advocating the common Aryan ancestry of 'the two Nations.' In 1936 then, the Reich Cabinet issued a special decree exempting Iranians from the restrictions of the Nuremberg Racial Laws on the grounds that they were 'pure blooded Aryans' (Lenczowski. 1944, p. 160). And in 1939, the Nazis provided Persians with what they called a German Scientific Library. The library contained over 7.500 books carefully selected "to convince lranian readers...of the kinship between the National Socialist Reich and the "Aryan culture" of Iran" (Lenczowski. 1944, p. 161). In various pro-Nazi publications, lectures, speeches, and ceremonies, parallels were drawn between the Shah of Iran and Hitler, and praise the charisma and virtue of the Fuhrerprinzip (Rezun. 1982, p. 29).Hitler became a national hero of Iranians and all so-called 'oppressed Aryan peoples. For instance, a journal titled "Nameh-ye Iran-e Bastan" (the Journal of Ancient Iran) identified Hitler as "one of the greatest men in the world":...

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Luckfibs

11:50 PMJun 23 2009

Tr444514 11:47 PMJun 23 2009 You ALWAYS see silly little right wingers on these message boards dragging out The Ghost of Ronald Reagan and trumpeting his "Tear down this Wall !!!!" speech - ========================================================== it just eats you up inside huh?

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WashyWizard84

11:49 PMJun 23 2009

CECIL JOY No pints tonigt just Lipton Ice Tea.

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centristswillwin

11:49 PMJun 23 2009

Ramon Nevarez: In case I don't get a chance you, thanks for your honest and reasonable posts tonight. It's a pleasure not seeing a bunch of insults fly all night. I hope to encounter you again, sometime. We may disagree on ideology at some point, but I trust we can be gentlemen.

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Sargesam869

11:49 PMJun 23 2009

Caban don't fall for the lie that Luckfibs says when he claims to have served, he won't tell us when, where, what his MOS was, or what unit he was in, he is a phony.

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WashyWizard84

11:48 PMJun 23 2009

CECIL JOY Hillary is a Secretary of State and it is her duty to negotiate to dothe foreign relations stuff--Condoleeza Rice went to Iraq and Iran several times.

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DMANJR

11:48 PMJun 23 2009

RWEST..The silence from Washington is Deafening!! Obama is afraid to act. People are dying for freedom in Iran and Obama is going to the movies. What a coward!....DID YOU JUST TAKE YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE GROUND OBAMA HAS BEEN SPEAKING OUT OVER AND OVER ABOUT IRAN..TURN YOU TV UP EVEN AHMADINEJAD HEARD HIM.....

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Cecil Joy

11:48 PMJun 23 2009

WASHY, how many pints have yo had tonight?

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Tr444514

11:47 PMJun 23 2009

You ALWAYS see silly little right wingers on these message boards dragging out The Ghost of Ronald Reagan and trumpeting his "Tear down this Wall !!!!" speech - like Reagan personally pulled down the wall.Hey...the Berlin Wall came down TWO YEARS after that speech and had NOTHING to do with Ronnie.If...the Russians had been so FREAKED OUT by Reagan's DEMANDS...the Russians would of taken a sledgehammer and chisel to The Wall that evening and started tearing it down out of FEAR of Reagan's WRATH.Geez...Conservatives have to REINVENT "history" just to justify their very existence.It's just so SAD.Hey...LuckyFibster represents "American Exceptionalism" (NOT).Yep...he's just another ANGRY FAT WHITE GUY with a bad attitude playing WAR HERO fighting IMAGINARY "Commies" and "hate filled libs" to pass his LONELY HOURS.Now..that's Entertainment.

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WashyWizard84

11:47 PMJun 23 2009

VIRUS There is going to be nother war in either Iran or North Korea--it is coming to a head for decades and many presidents all th way back to Johnson have said Iran and North Korea are to be watched closely--don't you remember wht happened th last time America had conflict with Korea? It al l stems to back then--appeasement is ot the answer any longer--sooner or later a fight will happen---Chamberlain comes to mind also.

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