Iran marks Islamic revolution

IRAN: Iran declared itself a nuclear nation on Thursday as it marked the Islamic revolution’s 31st anniversary and launched what Washington called an ‘unprecedented’ crackdown on opposition supporters.

The elite Revolutionary Guards and police had warned they would clamp down heavily on any protests which, since they first erupted last June, have threatened the very pillars of the Islamic regime and split the senior clergy.

As vast crowds massed in Tehran to mark the 1979 revolution, the security forces attacked opposition leaders Mohammad Khatami and Mehdi Karroubi while clashing with their supporters, an opposition website said.

The State Department said later that US monitoring showed Iran had attempted “a near total information blockade” to deal with the protestors, which a spokeman labelled as an ‘unprecedented, overwhelming step.’

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used a keynote address to hundreds of thousands in Azadi (Freedom) Square to boast Iran was now a nuclear nation as he announced the production of its first highly enriched uranium.

One day they said we cannot enrich uranium, but with the resistance of our leader, nation ... and with the help of God, the Iranian nation has become nuclear,” he said, defying mounting Western calls for new UN sanctions.

The European Union warned later that it would announce new sanctions within “days or weeks” even if the UN Security Council failed to do so.

Iran had previously enriched uranium to just 3.5 percent but has started enriching it to the higher level required for a Tehran medical research reactor after snubbing a UN-drafted plan for the nuclear fuel to be supplied by France and Russia.

“Even if this is the first time we enriched to this level, the process is working perfectly,” Salehi said.

Opposition website Rahesabz and witnesses said clashes took place at Sadeghieh Square, about a kilometre (half a mile) from Azadi Square to mark the toppling of the US-backed shah in 1979.

Security forces “fired tear gas and were brandishing knives when they clashed with our supporters” before the cleric reached Sadeghieh Square in western Tehran from where he was supposed to join the marches.

Karroubi’s other son Ali was also arrested, Hossein said. State television showed footage of men, chador-clad women and children carrying banners reading ‘Death to America, Death to Israel!’ massed at Azadi Square.

The hardline president told the crowd Iran would soon triple its daily production of low-enriched uranium (3.5 percent), in defiance of the West and its threats of new sanctions.

Tehran, AFP