they're simply putting down foreign inspired insurgents who are causing civil strife.

Funny how, all of a sudden, you have your ears to the ground about shia affairs. Any other time you feign having no clue or knowledge about them.

You mean Muslims on both sides, shites and sunnis, are puppets of foreign powers?

And the reign of terror burns on...

abu - their own officials within iran gave facts it was rigged.
over 100% of votes in some areas.
the exact same %age voting for the dictator in many regions.

The US government on Wednesday expressed its sympathy for relatives of the 168 people who were killed when their Caspian Airlines flight crashed in Iran earlier in the day.

Washington "extends it condolences to the families of those who lost their lives in today's crash," read a brief statement by State Department spokesman Ian Kelly.

"We are working through the US embassy in Yerevan and the Swiss Protecting Power in Iran to determine whether any American citizens were on board," the statement said.

Quote:


About their religious doctrines I have very little knowledge, nevermind mixing up the two though, it's all the same isn't it? For such a simple minded danish anyway.

So either way, whichever specific definition you choose, Islam is anything but secular. In Islam, ALL matters are spiritual, there is no wordly.

DEFIANT opposition supporters have staged fresh protests in Tehran, witnesses say, after powerful cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani called for detainees held in a post-election crackdown to be freed.

Mehdi Karroubi, a defeated presidential candidate, came under attack from men in plainclothes on his way to the prayers, according to his son Hossein and Fars news agency.

Thousands of supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, chanting "Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein!" and "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest), demonstrated around Tehran University, where Rafsanjani led Friday prayers attended by the former premier and Karroubi, witnesses said.

The demonstrations were held in defiance of a ban slapped on such gatherings by the Iranian authorities in the wake of deadly unrest sparked by the disputed June 12 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The witnesses said riot police and Islamist vigilantes were deployed on streets near the university to prevent the demonstrations, but protesters managed to evade them to stage brief gatherings.

They said several people had been arrested, including a leading lawyer and women's rights campaigner, Shadi Sadr, and police had fired tear-gas and paintball bullets to disperse crowds, especially near the interior ministry.

"Shadi called me from an unknown location and said she was arrested by plainclothes officials who forcefully got her into a car," Hossein Nilchian, her husband, said.

Thousands of people, many wearing green bands showing support for Mousavi, converged on the area surrounding Tehran University, including many families with children, witnesses said.

One witness said policemen smashed the windows of several cars whose drivers were sounding their horns, a tactic adopted by protesters. The crowds later dispersed.

The post-election anti-Ahmadinejad protests held last month set off the worst crisis in the Islamic republic since the 1979 revolution.

The ensuing violence left at least 20 people dead, many scores wounded and hundreds arrested, according to official figures.

Friday prayers offered a new opportunity for opposition supporters to stage demonstrations. They last took the streets on July 9 to commemorate the anniversary of bloody student unrest in 1999.

Mousavi, who attended the Muslim prayers marking his first public appearance in a month, has charged that the June vote was rigged and that he in fact had won the contest.

A photograph released by the ISNA news agency showed him sitting in between dozens of his supporters at the prayer venue.

Rafsanjani, who was Iran's president between 1989 and 1997, said events since the election had broken the trust of Iranians that now needed to be restored.

"Our key issue is to return the trust which the people had and now to some extent is broken," Rafsanjani said.

"It is not necessary that in this situation people be jailed. Let them join their families. We should not allow enemies to rebuke and ridicule us because of detentions," said Rafsanjani, who backed Mousavi in the poll.

He said he had formulated a possible solution to the current political crisis, which he had discussed with members of two key institutions which he heads, the Expediency Council and the Assembly of Experts.

"A large group of ... people of the country say they have doubt" about the result of the election, the cleric said. "We should work to address these doubts."

The foreign media was banned from covering the Friday prayers. Rafsanjani urged that curbs on the media be lifted, saying all sides should be able to "say what they want logically and without fighting".

Karroubi's son Hossein said his father was attacked at the door of the university.

"When my father got out of the car in front of the university, some plainclothes forces standing by the door attacked and assaulted him," Hossein was quoted as saying on the website of Karroubi's party, Etemad Melli.

"His turban fell. They insulted him using very abusive and outrageous names, he said, adding that he saw "the plainclothes commander with a wireless telling them they had done a very good job."
The Fars news agency said some "suspicious people beat Karroubi".

There are two factions claiming to speak for the people. Rafsanjani represents the first faction. During his sermon, he spoke for the tradition of the founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who took power during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Rafjsanjani argued that Khomeini wanted an Islamic republic faithful to the will of the people, albeit within the confines of Islamic law. Rafsanjani argued that he was the true heir to the Islamic revolution. He added that Khomeini’s successor — the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — had violated the principles of the revolution when he accepted that Rafsanjani’s archenemy, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had won Iran’s recent presidential election.