Iranian protestors, police clash; US backs 'people in the streets'
(Video) Security forces fire teargas to disperse thousands of opposition supporters chanting 'Death to the dictator' while marching toward Tehran square; dozens arrested during clashes with police in central Iran. Clinton slams 'hypocrisy' of Iranian government. News agency says one killed by protestors
VIDEO - Dozens of Iranian opposition supporters were arrested on Monday while taking part in a banned rally in Tehran to support popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, an Iranian opposition website said.
"Witnesses say in some parts of Tehran security forces arrested dozens of protesters," opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi's Kaleme website reported.
Security forces fired teargas to scatter thousands of opposition supporters marching toward a Tehran square, a witness said. There were also clashes between police and demonstrators, resulting in dozens of arrests, in Isfahan in central Iran, the country's third largest city, another witness told Reuters.
The semi-official Fars news agency said one bystander was shot dead and several other people were wounded by protesters.
The rallies amounted to a test of strength for the reformist opposition, which had not taken to the streets since Dec. 2009, when eight people were killed.
Large numbers of police wearing riot gear and security forces were stationed around the main squares of the capital and pairs of state militiamen roamed the streets on motorbikes.
There were minor clashes at some points across the sprawling capital city of some 12 million people, witnesses said. Mobile telephone connections were down in the area of the protests.
"There are thousands of people marching ... Security forces fired tear gas to disperse them near Imam Hossein square," one witness said earlier in the day.
"Death to the dictator," some of the protesters chanted, though in other places, demonstrators marched in silence.
The demonstrators marched towards Azadi (Freedom) Square, a traditional rallying point for protests in central Tehran dominated by a huge white marble arch. Hundreds of marchers also gathered in Isfahan and Shiraz, witnesses said.
But security forces surrounded the Tehran houses of opposition leaders Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi preventing them and Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard from joining the march, their websites said.
"Mirhossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard are still trying to leave their house and join the protests... but security forces are preventing them. Security forces have even threatened Mousavi's guards to not allow them to leave the house by any means," the Mousavi's Kalame website said.
Mousavi and Karroubi took advantage of official Iranian backing for the huge street protests in Egypt and Tunisia to call their own demonstrations in solidarity, but authorities refused their request.
The opposition nevertheless renewed the call for the rally. Iranian authorities have warned the opposition to avoid creating a "security crisis" by reviving protests that erupted after the vote, the biggest unrest in Iran since the 1979 revolution.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia an "Islamic awakening", akin to the 1979 revolution that overthrew the US-backed shah.
But the opposition see the unrest as being more similar to their own protests following the June 2009 election which they say was rigged in favor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Trash bins torched by protestors (Photo: Reuters)
The Revolutionary Guards, fiercely loyal to Khamenei, put down the 2009 protests. Two people were hanged and scores of opposition supporters jailed.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul, on a visit to Tehran, called on Middle Eastern governments to listen to the demands of their people, although he did not refer to Iran.
"We see that sometimes when the leaders and heads of countries do not pay attention to the nations' demands, the people themselves take action to achieve their demands," Gul told a news conference alongside Ahmadinejad.
Any use of heavy force to stop the marches in Iran during Gul's visit could be an embarrassment for Turkey.
However, Ankara, officially an ally of the West, was one of the first governments to congratulate Ahmadinejad on his 2009 re-election and is seeking to triple the volume of trade with its neighbour despite UN, US and EU sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic over its disputed nuclear activity.
Iranian authorities deny doctoring the 2009 election results and accuse opposition leaders of being part of a Western plot to overthrow the Islamic system.
"They are incapable of doing a damn thing," the hardline Kayhan newspaper quoted Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi as saying, echoing words used by the late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to refer to the United States. The opposition is "guided by Iran's enemies abroad", Moslehi said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed support for the tens of thousands of protesters in Iran's capital, saying they "deserve to have the same rights that they saw being played out in Egypt and are part of their own birthright."
Speaking to reporters after meeting House Speaker John Boehner on Monday, Clinton said she and others in Barack Obama's administration "very clearly and directly support the aspirations of the people who are in the streets" of Tehran.
She spoke of the "hypocrisy" of the Iranian government that hailed the protests in Egypt but has tried to suppress opposition at home.
Clinto added that there "needs to be a commitment to open up the political system, to hear the voices of the opposition and civil society."
Reuters, AP contributed to the report
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