Violence Grips Tehran Amid Crackdown

The violence unfolded on a day of extraordinary tension across Iran . The opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, appeared at a demonstration in southern Tehran and called for a general strike if he were to be arrested. “I am ready for martyrdom,” he told supporters.

It is Iran ’s worst crisis since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
In Washington, President Obama called the government’s reaction “violent and unjust,” and, quoting Martin Luther King Jr., warned again that the world was watching what happened in Tehran.
“If they open fire on people and if there is bloodshed, people will get angrier,” said a protester, Ali, 40. “They are out of their minds if they think with bloodshed they can crush the movement.”

Mr. Obama’s statement was his strongest to date on the post-election turmoil in Iran . Saying that “each and every innocent life” lost would be mourned, he added: “Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.
“Martin Luther King once said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends

toward justice.’ I believe that. The international community believes

that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian people’s

belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.”
(New York Times)