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Stark
08-04-2010, 07:56 AM
(Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was unharmed by an attack with a homemade explosive device on his motorcade during a visit to the western city of Hamadan on Wednesday, a source in his office said.

The source said Ahmadinejad's convoy was targeted as he was traveling from Hamadan's airport to give a speech in a local sports arena. The president was unhurt but others had been injured in the blast. One person was arrested.

"There was an attack this morning. Nothing happened to the president's car," the source told Reuters. "Investigations continue ... to find out who was behind it."

Ahmadinejad, who has cracked down on opposition since a disputed June 2009 presidential election, appeared on live Iranian television at the sports stadium in Hamadan. He was apparently well and made no mention of any assault.

The populist, hard-line Ahmadinejad has accumulated enemies in conservative and reformist circles in the Islamic Republic as well as abroad.

Al Arabiya television said an attacker had thrown a bomb at Ahmadinejad's convoy before being detained. Dubai-based Al Arabiya cited its own sources as saying the bomb had hit a car carrying journalists and presidential staff.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

On Monday, during a speech to a conference of expatriate Iranians in Tehran, Ahmadinejad said he believed he was the target of an assassination plot by Israel. "The stupid Zionists have hired mercenaries to assassinate me," he said.

Ahmadinejad's government is facing economic pain as new foreign sanctions imposed over Iran's disputed nuclear energy program bite on the world's fifth biggest oil exporter.

PROVOCATIVE SPEECHES

One of Ahmadinejad's trademarks has been constant travel around his vast country to deliver provocative speeches before outwardly adoring crowds who shout "death" to Iran's foes.

The oil market initially reacted calmly to reports of the attempted attack.

"I expect that any backlash there might be from Ahmadinejad will be far more important to the oil market than the initial attack itself," said Paul Harris, head of natural resources risk management at Bank of Ireland.

"You would expect the oil market to react if there is any attempt to link the attack to the current tensions with the West and the ramping up of sanctions."

Baqer Moin, a London-based Iran expert, said Hamadan was a stable area without any notable ethnic or local tension.

"Let's wait and see who they accuse, an internal or an external enemy," Moin said.

Several armed groups opposed to the government are active in Iran, mostly fighting in the name of ethnic Kurds in the northwest, Baluch in the southeast and Arabs in the southwest.

The banned Mujahideen Khalq, listed by the United States as a terrorist group, carried out several anti-government attacks after the 1979 Islamic revolution. It was blamed for two 1981 bombings that killed dozens of senior officials in Tehran, including the president and prime minister.

Shahin Gobadi, French-based spokesman for the Mujahideen, now part of an opposition coalition known as National Council of Resistance of Iran, denied involvement.

Asked if his group was behind the attack, he said: "Absolutely not, absolutely not. It has nothing to do with us. I don't know what happened but it has nothing to do with us."

Ahmadinejad recently sought to isolate rival political factions by declaring that "the regime has only one party, which is the velayat" -- a reference to Shi'ite Islam's hidden Imam, for now represented by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Just as combative toward external pressure, the president derided sanctions over Iran's nuclear program as "pathetic" and vowed to pursue what Iran says is a quest for nuclear energy, not weapons as the West believes.

On Monday, Ahmadinejad called on U.S. President Barack Obama to face him in a televised one-on-one debate to see who has the best solutions for the world's problems.

Ahmadinejad, backed by Khamenei and the elite Revolutionary Guards, crushed street protests that greeted his disputed re-election in June 2009, although he has yet to silence losing reformist candidates Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi.

The president, first elected in 2005, also seems bent on displacing an older layer of conservative leaders and clerics whose influence dates back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Many of them resent the rising economic and political power of Ahmadinejad's allies in the Revolutionary Guards and are disconcerted by his mystical devotion to the hidden Imam.

Conservatives such as parliament speaker Ali Larijani, a fierce critic of Ahmadinejad's economic policies, have tacitly urged Khamenei, the Islamic Republic's ultimate authority, to rein in the fiery president, to little visible effect.

Reformists have blamed state "discrimination" for creating discontent that has emboldened a Sunni Muslim rebel group behind two suicide bombings that killed at least 28 people in a Shi'ite mosque in southeastern Iran last month.

NeilDunne
08-04-2010, 08:31 AM
I just heard that the government have actually claimed it was a firework and the person who threw it has been arrested!

bobdina
08-04-2010, 09:39 AM
Here's the story saying it was a firecracker

TEHRAN, Iran – A conservative Iranian website said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad escaped an assassination attempt after a handmade grenade exploded near his convoy on Wednesday, but Tehran state TV denied the report.

Other media reported an explosion in the area but gave conflicting accounts about the cause. Some said it was a firecracker.

The website, khabaronline.ir, said the grenade detonated near Ahmadinejad's convoy as he was on his way to address a crowd in the western Iranian town of Hamedan but did not harm him.

The president later gave his speech as planned, and it was broadcast live on state television. He made no mention of the attack in his remarks, focusing instead on the country's disputed nuclear program.

He struck a hard line against Western demands that Iran halt its nuclear activities. The U.S. and its allies accuse Iran of trying to develop atomic weapons, but Tehran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

"It will be one of your big mistakes if you think you, resorting to lies and hue and cry, are able to achieve something and we will give you any concession," Ahmadinejad told the crowd at the Hamedan stadium.

One person was arrested in connection with the attack, the website report said, adding that Ahmadinejad's car was about 100 yards (meters) from the blast. It also said there was no information whether anyone was injured.

"The explosion caused a lot of smoke," the report said.

Iran's state-run Press TV, the government's main English-language broadcast arm, said an informed source in Ahmadinejad's office vehemently denied the allegation, insisting "no such attack had happened."

Ahmadinejad, whose popularity at home is waning amid a faltering economy and tightened U.N. and Western sanctions over Tehran's nuclear program, regularly tours the countryside to deliver speeches to grass-roots supporters in cities and town across Iran.

A U.S.-Iran relations specialist, Jim Walsh with the MIT program on security studies, said that "Iran has a strong interest in trying to minimize this event, given the domestic problems following last year's unrest over the presidential election."

Walsh stressed that assassinations have been a staple of Iranian politics in the past and that while there have been attempts on other Iranian officials, there's been no known such attack on Ahmadinejad.

Several media outlets differed in the details about what happened.

The semiofficial Fars news agency said a handmade grenade was thrown at the path where the president and his entourage had been but only after they had left the site. Fars said the explosion disturbed people at the site.

The government-owned Borna news agency said somebody threw a firecracker after the convoy had passed, while the semiofficial Mehr news agency called it a handmade percussion grenade.

A photo by the semiofficial Isna news agency showed smoke dozens of yards away from the convoy, which was surrounded by people. It did not elaborate on the source of the smoke.

Hamedan, 200 miles (340 kilometers) west of Tehran, is not known as a restive area, but it is close to Kurdish area of Iran that has witnessed occasional clashes between Kurdish rebels and security forces over the past years.

Ahmadinejad also said Monday during a speech that Israel had sent agents to assassinate him, but he gave no details.

The accusation came a day after another conservative Iranian website, Mashreghnews.ir, reported that security forces had detained a terrorist group in Tehran that planned to assassinate officials. It linked the group to Kurdish separatists.

In May, Ahmadinejad was jeered by a crowd demanding jobs when he was speaking during a similar visit to the southern Iranian town of Khorramshahr.

In 2005, bandits reportedly killed a bodyguard of Ahmadinejad during his visit to restive Sistan-Baluchistan province in southeastern Iran. However, the president had left the province before the attack occurred.

Toki
08-04-2010, 02:31 PM
It wouldn't mattered though. The Mullahs rule Iran.

laxaddict992
08-05-2010, 11:19 AM
sorry guys, I missed

delta123
08-06-2010, 12:00 AM
sorry guys, I missed

freedom with in could work but USA right know don"t have the balls stand with Iran Patriots

The Sons of Liberty are hopeful growing in state the must see iraq still there still some what free
:USA::USA:
:tongue0016:

ZATO1414
08-06-2010, 01:41 AM
If that little prick would just motorcade down my driveway...