Iran opposition defies ban on protesting again

Progovernment demonstrators attempted to attack two opposition leaders, Mohammad Khatami, former president, and Mir Hossein Mousavi, former prime minister, at separate protest sites in Tehran, but both escaped unharmed, news agencies and opposition websites reported. Two other senior opposition figures, including influential Shi’ite Muslim cleric and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, former president, 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 disrupt Quds Day, the annual day of public support for Palestine.

Instead, 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 the disputed victory of Ahmadinejad in Iran’s June 12 presidential election ran into a fierce government crackdown.

In a speech at Friday prayers marking Quds Day, Ahmadinejad denounced Israel and the West, questioned whether the Holocaust occurred, and charged that it was a pretext for occupying Palestine.

Yesterday’s competing demonstrations turned violent after security forces intervened in the afternoon, and riots erupted at several locations in downtown Tehran, the state-run 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 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, antigovernment protesters 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.

In Washington, a top adviser to President Obama said the president will not meet with Ahmadinejad at the United Nations next week.

US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said she doesn’t expect the two to have “direct engagement.’’

Obama will be in New York from Monday to Wednesday for the gathering of the 192-member UN General Assembly.

Rice spoke yesterday, the same day Ahmadinejad lashed out at Israel and the West and again questioned whether the Holocaust happened. Rice called those comments “hateful’’ and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters, “Obviously we condemn what he said.’’

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the Obama administration remains “ready to engage with Iran’’ diplomatically to resolve differences, notably over Tehran’s nuclear program. But she condemned what she described as the Ahmadinejad government’s repression of dissent and warned that it would face “accompanying costs’’ if it continues to defy the international community on the nuclear issue.

A week before Quds Day, Khamenei, Iran’s top religious and political leader, had warned that the ceremonies 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.

Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.