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Tehran Tense After Clashes That Killed at Least 13
Supporters of the defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi fled from the riot police on Saturday in Tehran.
TEHRAN — A day after police and militia forces used guns, truncheons, tear gas and water cannons to beat back thousands of demonstrators, a tense quiet set over this city Sunday as the standoff between the government and thousands of protestors hardened into a test of wills that has spilled blood and claimed lives..
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Police officers confronted demonstrators Saturday in Tehran. The opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, appeared at a demonstration in the city and called for a strike if he were to be arrested. More Photos »
It was unclear how the confrontation would play out now that the government has abandoned its restraint and large numbers of protestors have demonstrated their willingness to risk injury and even death as they continue to dispute the results of Iran’s presidential election nine days ago.
There was uncertainty as well about how many deaths resulted from Saturday’s violence. Iranian state television reported 13 deaths, while state radio said 19.
There was no sign on the streets early Sunday of the heavy security forces from the night before, but there were reports that protestors planned to demonstrate again later in the day, beginning at about 5 p.m., giving both sides time to regroup, or reconsider.
Since the crisis broke open with massive streets protests — posing the greatest challenge to the Islamic theocracy since the 1979 revolution — the government has declared its refusal to compromise, instead turning loose its security forces and militia to crush opposition voices. But now as the numbers of dead and injured begin to mount, it is unclear how, even if the protests can be stopped, the leadership can patch over the deep divisions in the Iranian society and rebuild legitimacy with Iranians who believe the election was rigged.
In Washington on Saturday, President Obama called the government’s reaction “violent and unjust,” and, quoting Martin Luther King Jr., warned again that the world was watching what happened in Tehran.
The Iranian government continued its efforts to block all coverage of events here, but information began to trickle out from eyewitnesses and on social networking sites, much of it in the form of video said to show the force of the government crackdown Saturday. The most vivid image to emerge was contained in a video posted on several Web sites that showed a young woman with her face covered in blood. Text posted with the video said she had been shot. It was not possible to verify the authenticity of the video.
A group called The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran reported on its Web site that injured protestors were being arrested as they sought medical treatment at hospitals. The group said that doctors had been ordered to report protest-related injuries to the authorities.
The government has pressed its policy of repression and intimidation the last several days, arresting reformers, intellectuals and others who promoted reform ideas or challenged the leadership’s version of events.
Iranian state television reported Sunday that the government had arrested five members of the family of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president who heads two influential councils in Iran. Mr. Rafsanjani, one of the fathers of the revolution, has been locked in a power struggle with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and worked closely with the reform movement during the presidential election. The arrests could not be independently verified, but they would represent an escalation of the government’s crackdown.
The televison report identified one of those arrested as Mr. Rafsanjani’s daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, but did not identify the others. A Web site associated with the reform movement said they were accused of provoking people.
In a sign that the crisis in Iran threatened to spill far beyond the nation’s borders, the speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani, on Sunday called for reconsidering relations with Britain, France and Germany after their “shameful” statements about the presidential election, Reuters reported.
State radio reported that Mr. Larijani, who has his own aspirations to one day become president, made his comments in a speech to the full parliament. Mr. Larijani’s position, which reflects the anti-western orientation of the hard-liners in charge, could further undermine President Obama’s efforts to reach out to Iran and begin a diplomatic dialogue. The United States severed ties with Iran 30 years ago.
The relative calm Sunday morning followed a day of violent clashes and extraordinary tension across Iran. The opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, appeared at a demonstration in southern Tehran and called for a general strike if he were to be arrested. “I am ready for martyrdom,” he told supporters.
In an interview broadcast Sunday on Iranian television, Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki said that officials were examining the charge of voting fraud and expected to issue their findings by the end of the week. But like Ayatollah Khamenei, Mr. Mottaki appeared to have already judged the vote as clean and fair. He said the "possibility of organized and comprehensive disruption and irregularities in the election , is almost close to zero," in remarks translated by Iran’s English-language Press TV.
With police on the streets demonstrating a willingness to injure and even kill, one question political analysts and opposition members were beginning to ask was whether it was time to shift strategies, from street protests to some kind of national strike. It was unclear if the opposition had the support or organization, especially within the middle class, to carry out such a measure, but a strike would be immune to the heavy hand of the state and could wield leverage by crippling the already stumbling economy, analysts said.
But so far, Iran’s divisions have played out on the streets. On Saturday, regular security forces stood back and urged protesters to go home to avoid bloodshed, while the feared pro-government militia, the Basij, beat protesters with clubs and, witnesses said, electric prods.
In some places, the protesters pushed back, rushing the militia in teams of hundreds: At least three Basijis were pitched from their motorcycles, which were then set on fire. The protesters included many women, some of whom berated as “cowards” men who fled the Basijis. There appeared to be tens of thousands of protesters in Tehran, far fewer than the mass demonstrations early last week, most likely because of intimidation.
“If they open fire on people and if there is bloodshed, people will get angrier,” said a protester, Ali, 40. “They are out of their minds if they think with bloodshed they can crush the movement.”
Separately, state-run media reported that three people were wounded Saturday when a suicide bomber attacked at the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the southern part of the city, several miles from the scheduled protests. The report of the blast could not be independently confirmed.
Mr. Obama’s statement was his strongest to date on the post-election turmoil in Iran. Saying that “each and every innocent life” lost would be mourned, he added: “Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.
“Martin Luther King once said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian people’s belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.”
Journalists were banned from leaving their offices to report on the protests. A reporter from an American news organization said she had been called by a member of the Basij militia warning her not to go to the venue for the Saturday rally because the situation would be dangerous and there could be fatalities. The authorities were also reported on Saturday to have renewed an offer of a partial recount of the ballots in the disputed election — an offer that the opposition has previously rejected. A letter from Mr. Moussavi published on one of his Web sites late Saturday repeated his demand for the election to be annulled.
Regional analysts said that, by calling for an end to the rallies and promising the use of force, Ayatollah Khamenei had inserted himself directly into the confrontation, invoking his own prestige and that of Iran’s clerical leaders. But his speech also laid the groundwork to suppress the opposition movement with a harder hand, characterizing any further protests as being against the Islamic republic itself.
Iran’s National Security Council reinforced Ayatollah Khamenei’s warning on Saturday, state media reported, telling Mr. Moussavi to “refrain from provoking illegal rallies.”
The demand came in a letter from the head of the council after a formal complaint by Mr. Moussavi that law enforcement agencies had failed to protect protesters.
“It is your duty not to incite and invite the public to illegal gatherings; otherwise, you will be responsible for its consequences,” the letter said, according to state media.
Amateur video posted to the Web since Saturday afternoon showed scenes of chaos and gunfire, some of it as vividly violent as in the clashes on Monday that left at least seven people dead. One video posted on the BBC Farsi service showed streets on fire and a large crowd fleeing amid several rounds of semiautomatic gunfire. A photo showed the riot police repelling demonstrators with a hand-held water cannon.
The Basij militia completely blocked off Enghelab Square, one major gathering ground for the protesters. They are less accountable than regular security forces and, many witnesses said, were far more violent on Saturday.
“Please go home,” one regular officer told protesters. “We are scared of the Basijis, too.”
One woman who lives off Vali Asr Square, near where the protests took place, said Basijis beat and kicked anyone outside, shouting at them to return to their houses.
“The streets near our house were full of Basijis wearing helmets and holding batons,” she said.
The government warned that it would step up the pressure on the opposition from its regular security forces if it continued to stage demonstrations.
“We acted with leniency, but I think from today on, we should resume law and confront more seriously,” Gen. Esmaeil Ahmadi Moghadam said on state television. “The events have become exhausting, bothersome and intolerable. I want them to take the police cautions seriously because we will definitely show a serious confrontation against those who violate rules.”
In a measure of the scale of the opposition’s complaints, one losing candidate in the June 12 election, Mohsen Rezai, a conservative former commander of the Revolutionary Guards, claimed to have won between 3.5 million and 7 million votes compared with the 680,000 accorded to him in the first announcement of results a week ago, state-run Press TV reported Saturday.
The authorities had also invited the three opposition candidates to attend a meeting on Saturday with the 12-member Guardian Council, the panel of clerics which oversees and certifies election results. But only one candidate — Mr. Rezai — attended, Press TV said.