TEHRAN, Iran - Dozens of protesters hurled eggs and at least one shoe at President Hassan Rouhani as he returned to Tehran on Saturday after a groundbreaking phone call with President Barack Obama and other outreach to the West that has been otherwise greeted with widespread support in Iran.
The protest - coming even as supporters gathered to cheer the diplomatic outreach - quickly laid bare the political fissures in Iran over whether to engage with the United States and the challenges Rouhani and his aides face as they try to get international sanctions over the country’s nuclear program lifted.
Rouhani was standing in his car, waving through the sunroof as he passed supporters at the airport Saturday, when opponents began to pelt the vehicle. Security guards scrambled to shieldthe president with an umbrella as other protesters blocked the road by praying on the pavement.
“Long live Rouhani, man of change” the president’s backers shouted, as a small police contingent struggled to control the crowd of about 200 that seemed to be mostly made up of Rouhani supporters. The hard-liners responded by shouting, “Our people are awake and hate America.”
Analysts expressed surprise that the protest was allowed, given the tight controls over public gatherings, and it raised the possibility that some in the country’s opaque political hierarchy were sending a message of displeasure over last week’s sudden turn of events. It is widely believed that the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supported Rouhani’s suggestions of an openness to dialogue about the nuclear program during his visit to the U.N. General Assembly last week. But the ayatollah has not yetspoken in public about the New York trip.
The phone call with Obama came just days after Rouhani skipped a luncheon at the United Nations where the two leaders had been expected to shake hands. But a meeting Thursday between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, was described as constructive and led Iranian officials to contact the White House on Friday to suggest the phone call, U.S. officials said.
Rouhani received the call from Obama as he was on his way to John F. Kennedy Airport on Friday, the first contact between U.S. and Iranian presidents since before the hostage crisis 30 years ago.
Alaeddin Boroujerdi, who heads the foreign policy and national security committee in parliament, was quoted by Iranian media as saying that the call showed Iran’s “might.” But the hard-line rajanews.com news websitesaid there was no justification for Rouhani to talk to the “Great Satan,” its term for the United States, and that the conversation was “a strange and useless step.”
Rouhani has followed a policy of moderation and easing tensions with the outside world, a marked distance from the bombastic style of his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Rouhani said Iran is ready to provide assurances that the country’s nuclear program won’t be weaponized by offering greater transparency and cooperation. He has demanded lifting of sanctions in return.
In comments after his arrival in Tehran, Rouhani elaborated on the call.
“Yesterday as we were getting ready to head to the airport, the White House called and expressed willingness to set up a phone call between the American president and me,” the semiofficial Fars News agency quoted Rouhani as saying.
“A call was made to ourambassador’s cellphone,” Rouhani said. “The conversation mostly focused on the nuclear issue.”
The Iranian president also addressed the question of why he did not meet in person with Obama.
“A meeting between the two presidents needs some preparation, and since the ground was not prepared, this meeting did not take place,” Rouhani said.
National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Saturday that the phone call could begin the process of normalizing diplomatic relations.
Iran must first follow through on its pledge to seek nuclear power only for peaceful purposes and stop supporting terrorists, she said. Negotiations “will begin in earnest” next month when diplomats gather in Geneva, Rice said on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS program, in an interview that will air today.
“It’s way too soon to presume either the prospect of an agreement on the nuclear program, which we hope to be able to achieve, but we’re quite sober about the potential for that,” Rice said. “If we could have a peaceful resolution of the nuclear program and an end to Iran’s support for terrorism and other behavior that has concerned us over many years, then we could begin a serious discussion about the future.”
Meanwhile, the CNN website, blocked since unrest broke out in 2009 over Ahmadinejad’s disputed election, was accessible Saturday in what could be a sign of gradual easing of Internet restrictions and outreach to the US. In the past, blocked websites have become available temporarily before being placed again behind official firewalls.
Information for this article was contributed by Thomas Erdbrink of The New York Times; by Ali Akbar Dareini of The Associated Press; and by Jeff Kearns, Margaret Talev and Kambiz Foroohar of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 7 on 09/29/2013