TEHRAN — Iran's tense capital braced for the possibility of violence after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei demanded Friday that protesters end their mass demonstrations against alleged vote-rigging and suggested that those who defied him would be responsible for the consequences.
Khamenei, who is Iran's highest spiritual and political leader, ordered protesters off the streets and rejected charges that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used fraud to win reelection last week. But the opposition was unbowed, and called on its supporters to return to the streets today.
Plans for a march at Enghelab (Revolution) Square a day after Khamenei's forceful Friday sermon set the stage for a possible confrontation in the heart of the city.
"The way of the law is open," Khamenei told tens of thousands of worshipers who gathered in downtown Tehran and countless others who listened on television and radio. "If people continue to take the other way, I will come back and speak more directly. . . . If they do not end it, then the consequences lie with them.
"Nothing can be changed. The presidential campaign is finished," he declared.
At the sermon's end, Khamenei began lamenting his physical condition and weeping, a gesture that signaled his displeasure and moved the throngs of dignitaries and Basiji militiamen gathered before him to weep in response. Observers said Khamenei's gesture, similar to one he made during the height of 1999 student protests, was a call for loyalists to crack down on the demonstrators as a way of righting a wrong done to their patron.
The huge crowd flowed out of the Tehran University venue and into the main streets outside, roaring, "Our vote is written in blood, and we gave it to the leader."
Ahmadinejad's main challenger, former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, must now decide between his allegiance to his followers or to Iran's unique Islamic system.
A sense of foreboding hung over the city. Shortly after Khamenei spoke, black clouds gathered and unleashed a rare late spring thunderstorm. And as darkness came, residents in many parts of the capital climbed to their rooftops and angrily shouted, "God is great!" and "Death to the dictator!" in what has become a nightly ritual of protest stemming from the widespread belief that the vote was rigged.
"The presence of people in the streets will continue, and I do hope everything will be solved in the favor of . . . [the] Iranian nation," said Elahe Koolai, a prominent reformist and Mousavi supporter.
