More like this
Grenade attack on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President said to have escaped injury in blast three weeks after mosque attack
State-controlled media in Tehran have tried to play down reports of an assassination attempt on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this morning. The attack is reported to have occurred in the provincial capital Hamedan, in western Iran, just before the president was due to make a speech.
A source in the president's office confirmed to Reuters that a man has been arrested after a grenade was thrown at the convoy carrying the president. Despite some people being hurt, Ahmadinejad escaped injury and was able to make his planned address, which was broadcast live.
But the state-controlled Press TV station, presumably under orders to lessen the negative PR of an attack on the president, later claimed that no such attack had taken place. Its report referred dismissively to a firecracker being thrown.
The incident occurred three weeks after two suicide bombers were reported to have killed at least 27 people at a Shia mosque in the city of Zahedan, south-eastern Iran. Ahmadinejad is a Shia.
Revolutionary Guards were among those who died in the mosque attack, which local media reported was the work of a Sunni rebel group, Jundullah, vowing revenge for the hanging of its leader by the state.
It is not yet known whether today's attack is the work of the same group.
The attack came within hours of the White House rebuffing an offer from Ahmadinejad of a face-to-face public debate with President Barack Obama on US policy towards Iran.
The White House said the offer showed new UN sanctions against Tehran were clearly having an effect.
"We have always said that we would be willing to sit down and discuss Iran's illicit nuclear programme if Iran is serious about doing that," spokesman Robert Gibbs said. "To date, that seriousness has not been there."
There have been no direct diplomatic ties between the US and Iran for more than three decades.
Ahmadinejad maintains that US policy favours its rival, Israel. Obama, he says, "overly values Zionists" and had missed taking advantage of "historic opportunities" to change relations between the two countries. ·
