WP: Security forces block year-end festivities

Tens of thousands of security forces took up positions at Tehran’s main squares and intersections Tuesday to block traditional celebrations marking the coming end of the Iranian year, which some officials said could reignite anti-government protests.

The move illustrates the government’s intensifying embrace of military tactics to quell unrest before it happens. Free Iran:  Unfortunately, this strategy has proved effective for the regime both on Feb. 11th and yesterday.  The regime will continue to repeat this formula – demonstrate overwhelming force to intimidate the people and prevent any demonstrations in the first place.  This way, the regime won’t actually have to use force and it’ll dampen people’s spirits.  I want the Green movement to succeed as much as anyone but unless the opposition comes up with a viable counter-strategy, the government may have the upper hand for now. Many observers here say the movement against the government has lost momentum in the face of the broad crackdowns. On Monday, the official Web site of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi posted a statement online encouraging supporters to stay the course.

In a square in western Tehran on Tuesday afternoon, rows of black-helmeted security forces, some bearing the logo of the powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps, could be seen standing next to a truck carrying a water cannon as a police helicopter hovered overhead. When a man tried to hail a cab in the middle of the street instead of from the sidewalk, four police officers immediately apprehended him.

The government’s tactics pushed planned street festivities underground, with people lining up in back alleys and secluded gardens to purify themselves by jumping over fires. The ritual is part of Chaharshanbe Suri, a pre-Islamic fire festival celebrated ahead of the Iranian new year, which this year starts March 20.

NYT:  Iranians Defy a Ban in a Display of Dissent

Iranians defied a ban on events marking a traditional festival on Tuesday, turning an annual celebration into a show of antigovernment sentiment.

Also Tuesday, the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi appeared to challenge the authority of the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, by assigning a name to the new Iranian year, a traditional prerogative of the ayatollah.

The celebration of the Feast of Fire, an ancient Iranian festival with Zoroastrian roots, has been banned every year since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and every year Iranians have celebrated anyway, setting off firecrackers, dancing in the streets and leaping over bonfires.

But this year, the opposition decided to make a political statement and urged supporters to celebrate the day. In response, the government took extra measures to ban celebrations.

Ayatollah Khamenei issued a decree over the weekend saying that the feast “has no religious basis and is harmful and must be avoided,” his Web site and several government Web sites reported.

The authorities forced stores and shopping malls in Tehran to close in the afternoon and banned motorcycles in the city. Thousands of pro-government forces were stationed on major streets. Municipal garbage containers were collected to prevent their being used to make bonfires, a witness said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

And neighborhood police officers went door to door warning residents that large celebrations were banned.

However, many neighborhoods “rocked” with bonfires and music later in the evening, witnesses said. The celebrations were scattered around Tehran but took place in almost all of the city’s neighborhoods. Firecrackers echoed across the city, witnesses said, despite police efforts over the past few weeks to confiscate them.

There were unconfirmed reports on opposition Web sites of sporadic clashes between pro-government forces and people in the streets.

LA Times:  Explosions and heavy security amid celebrations of ancient fire festival

Firecrackers and homemade explosives were heard throughout the Iranian capital on Tuesday night as Iranians took to the streets in celebration of Chaharshanbeh Souri,  an ancient Zoroastrian fire festival held ahead of the Persian New Year, amid a heavy police and security presence.

Opposition supporters had vowed to turn the event this year into a protest against the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And security forces took no chances.

On the streets of Tehran, armed security forces were out in full force, especially in main squares where protests had taken place earlier. Droves of helmeted “special guards” on motorcycles rumbled past stunned pedestrians. Plainclothes security officials oversaw checkpoints, pulling over cars filled with young people. Police officers on sidewalks could be seen ordering kids to open up their rucksacks.

Although no major clashes were reported between celebrators and security troops, skirmishes between helmeted and uniformed security forces and revelers broke out on Gisha Street, in the capital’s central west.

Time:  In Iran, a Street Demonstration That Both Sides Stay Away From

The holiday is so sensitive that the opposition doesn’t want to be anywhere near accusations that it is fomenting unrest during its celebration. The so-called Green Movement leadership actually asked its followers not to target the day for protest, as has been done with Muslim holy days and the anniversaries of important dates in the Islamic revolution led by the late Ayatullah Khomeini. The blowback would be worse for opposition leaders like Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi if they were seen as promoting demonstrations during a festival from the days before Iran converted to Islam. No one wants to be called un-Islamic.

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Yet the first day of Nowrooz has always been irresistible to Iranians, because it is tied not to Muslim piety but to Persian pride. Its roots are in Zoroastrianism, the world’s first monotheistic religion — the country’s national faith before Islam — one in which fire is revered as a symbol of purity. Apart from the theocracy, most Iranians in and outside the country, irrespective of their religion, celebrate the ancient rites. The Tuesday-night event itself is known as Chaharshanbe Suri (literally “Wednesday Party,” because dusk brings the new day in Iran) and was originally intended as a ritual to ward off evil spirits and negative energy collected in the previous year. That purification is done by leaping over a series of small bonfires.

Iranians marked a holiday that leads up to the Persian new year under the watchful eyes of police Tuesday night after the Islamic republic’s supreme leader tried to discourage the celebrations.

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Thousands of people turned out, some in groups as large as 400 people, to dance, listen to music and light bonfires in side streets around Tehran on the festival of Chaharshanbe Soori. But unlike other holidays in recent months, there was no immediate sign that the observance was becoming a platform for protests against the country’s leadership.

Parties continued into early Wednesday, including one in the northern neighborhood of Zafaranieh where about 150 people danced to music pouring out of cars in the neighborhood. Some revelers played cat-and-mouse games with police who roamed the streets, looking to break up ongoing celebrations.