Clashes in Iran on Anniversary of Embassy Takeover - NYTimes.com

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Clashes in Iran on Anniversary of Embassy Takeover

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Iran ’s beleaguered opposition movement struggled to reassert itself on Wednesday, as tens of thousands of protesters braved police beatings and clouds of tear gas on the sidelines of a major, government-sponsored anti-American rally.

The protests — in Tehran and several other cities — were the opposition’s largest street showing in almost two months, and came on the 30th anniversary of the takeover of the United States Embassy in 1979, a day of great symbolic importance for both Iran and the United States. Although a huge deployment of police beat back and scattered many of them, the protesters took heart at their ability to openly challenge the government despite a stream of stark warnings from all levels of Iran’s conservative establishment.

Protesters openly flouted the day’s official anti-American message, with about a thousand people, many wearing clothing and accessories in the opposition’s signature bright green color, gathering outside the Russian Embassy in Tehran and chanting, “The real den of spies is the Russian embassy.”

The American embassy has been called the “den of spies” in Iran for decades. But many opposition supporters were angered by Russia’s early acceptance of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ’s disputed victory in Iran’s June presidential elections.

It was a day of scattered protests and violence across central Tehran, and even some government authorities seemed to grudgingly concede that the opposition had — for the first time — disrupted the annual anti-American rally. The official IRNA news agency ...

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/middleeast/05iran.html?hp

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/middleeast/05iran.html?hp