According to the Mehr news agency, some in the crowd began chanting against former President Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani after he was noticed walking around Azadi. Mehr said Rafsanjani then packed up and left.
The crowd appeared thinner than usual, but that may have been because Tehran was in the midst of a cold spell. PressTV, the regime’s English-language news outlet, said “millions” of Iranians joined rallies all around the country. It put the turnout in Tehran at “hundreds of thousands,” as did the Mehr news agency.
The state news agency avoided citing any number, just calling the crowd “immense.”
Agence France Presse, on the other hand, put the crowd at Azadi Square at only 30,000.
The Islamic Republic News Agency said the crowd carried a banner in Iran’s national colors that was 2,000 meters (one-and-a-quarter mile) long through the streets to Azadi.
It said 22,000 students formed a chorus in the square to perform a song written to commemorate he anniversary.
It also quoted the widow of Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, the nuclear scientist assassinated a few weeks ago, as saying the chief message of the crowd was that the threats and sanctions imposed by foreigners would in no way undermine the will of the Iranian people.
As usual, the president was the featured speaker. He focused on Israel and said the Islamic Republic had broken the “idol” of the Holocaust that was used to justify the creation of Israel.
“The Iranian people have smashed the modern idol,” he said. “World arrogance [the United States] and colonialists created that idol called the Zionist regime in order to dominate the world. The spirit of this idol was a story called the Holocaust.… The Iranian people, showing courage and wisdom, smashed this idol to free the people of the West [from its hold].”
Mehr reported that a loud explosion heard during the rally was a gas balloon carrying advertising aloft that had apparently been filled with too much gas.
State television gave extensive coverage to the event including man-on-the-street interviews with a reporter asking people what President Obama was demanding of Iran. One man, acting like a drunkard, said. “This year, I call on you not to disappoint me and not to participate the rallies.”
Another interviewee laughed and said, “I get sick when I see Obama’s face. I do not want to say anything. In fact, I hate America.”
A third interviewee adopt the accent of a village hick and said, “Iranian people, do not participate in the 22 Bahman [February 11] rallies.”