US News

Revolutionary rage spreads to Iran

And now Iran.

Riot police clashed with tens of thousands of protesters who chanted, “Death to the dictator,” in Tehran yesterday in Iran’s first anti-government demonstrations in more than a year.

At least one person was shot dead and dozens injured, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported. More than 250 people were reported arrested.

The Obama administration — which had reacted slowly and cautiously to the protests that rocked Tunisia and Egypt — quickly threw its support behind the Iran marchers.

“Let me, clearly and directly, support the aspirations of the people who are in the streets in Iran today,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters in Washington.

“What we see happening in Iran today is a testament to the courage of the Iranian people and an indictment of the hypocrisy of the Iranian regime — a regime which over the last three weeks has constantly hailed what went on in Egypt.”

Iranian hard-liners, fearing that they would be the next target of the pro-democracy movement that is sweeping the Muslim world, put opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi under house arrest last week.

They also banned foreign media coverage of street protests and cut cellphone services. There were power blackouts in areas where the protests were taking place yesterday.

But witnesses reported as many as 200,000 protesters rallied in central Tehran to denounce President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They were confronted by 10,000 members of the police and security forces, some of whom attacked the protesters with tear gas, batons, paintball guns and fire extinguishers.

“An Iranian dies but doesn’t accept humiliation,” demonstrators chanted.

They also expressed unity with the Cairo protests, shouting, “We are all together!”

The Fars agency boasted that the government had foiled a US-Israeli plot to overthrow the Islamic Republic.

“Agents of the United States and Zionism were defeated again,” it said.

Fars also said the person who died was a bystander who had been shot by the protesters.

State TV parroted the official line, saying, “Hypocrites, monarchists, thugs and seditionists who wanted to create public disorder in Iran were arrested by our brave nation.”

The opposition Web site

Kaleme.com reported that similar rallies had been crushed in the central city of Isfahan and Shiraz in the south.

Earlier this month, Iranian officials hailed the upheaval in other Muslim states. But that boomeranged when opposition leaders cited the Tunisian and Egyptian examples as an inspiration to pro-democracy forces in Iran and called for yesterday’s rallies.

“It’s your turn, Ali,” protesters chanted, referring to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The demonstrations were the first since 2009, when Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election victory in June ignited massive anti-government protests that were ultimately put down by the government at the cost of more than 30 lives.

In other developments:

* In Bahrain, a key US ally, one person was reported killed and at least 25 injured in confrontations with police who fired bird-shot pellets to crush a “Day of Rage” rally planned for the capital, Manama.

* Government loyalists armed with broken bottles, daggers and rocks chased down thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a. Five people were reported wounded.