TEHRAN: Defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi said yesterday he was “ready for martyrdom” while leading protests that have shaken Iran and brought warnings of bloodshed from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Mousavi also called for a national strike if he is arrested, a witness said. As darkness fell, rooftop cries of Allah-o-Akbar sounded out across northern Tehran, an echo of tactics used in the 1979 revolution against the Shah.
In an act fraught with symbolic significance, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the mausoleum of the father of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, while unrest continued across Tehran in defiance of a ban on demonstrations. The attack on the mausoleum is likely to inflame passions among Iranians who revere the man. It was not clear who carried out the bombing. The bomber was killed and three others were wounded, according to the English-language Press TV.
Riot police deployed in force, firing tear gas and using batons and water cannon to disperse protesters. Supporters of Mousavi set on fire a building in southern Tehran used by backers of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a witness said. The witness also said police fired in the air to disperse rival supporters in Tehran’s Karegar Street.
Witnesses said 2,000 to 3,000 people were on the streets, fewer than the hundreds of thousands earlier in the week, but a clear challenge to Khamenei who used a speech on Friday to endorse disputed election results that gave Ahmadinejad a landslide victory.
Mousavi made clear he would not back down. “In a public address in southwestern Tehran, Mousavi said he was ready for martyrdom and that he would continue his path,” a Mousavi ally, who asked not to be named, told Reuters by telephone from Jeyhun Street in Tehran. A witness to the address said Mousavi appeared to anticipate action against him. “Mousavi called on people to go on national strike if he gets arrested,” the witness said.
Mousavi demanded the elections be annulled. “These disgusting measures (election rigging) were planned months ahead of the vote ... considering all the violations ... the election should be annulled,” Mousavi said in a letter to the country’s top legislative body, the Guardian Council.
The council earlier said it was ready to recount a random 10 percent of the votes cast in the June 12 poll to meet the complaints of Mousavi and two other candidates who lost to Ahmadinejad.
Breaking days of silence, US President Barack Obama urged the Iranian government to “stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people.” “The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching,” he said.
