TEHRAN — Hundreds of thousands of people marched in silence through central Tehran on Monday to protest Iran’s disputed presidential election in an extraordinary show of defiance from a broad cross section of society, even as the nation’s supreme leader called for a formal review of results he had endorsed two days earlier.
Having mustered the largest antigovernment demonstrations since the 1979 revolution, and defying an official ban, protesters began to sense the prospect — however slight at the moment — that the leadership’s firm backing of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had wavered.
The massive outpouring was mostly peaceful. But violence erupted after dark when protesters surrounded and attempted to set fire to the headquarters of the Basij volunteer militia, which is associated with the Revolutionary Guards, according to news agency reports. At least one man was killed, and several others were injured in that confrontation.
On Tuesday, Radio Payam, a state-owned station, reported that seven people were killed and others were wounded Monday night when “several thugs” tried to attack a military post and vandalize public property in the same area as the demonstration earlier in the day, according to Agence France-Presse.
In his first public comment on the situation in Iran, President Obama said Monday that he was deeply troubled by the postelection violence and he called on Iranian leaders to respect free speech and the democratic process. He told reporters he would continue pursuing a direct dialogue with Tehran, but he urged that any Iranian investigation of election irregularities be conducted without bloodshed.
The protests showed how the government’s assertion that Mr. Ahmadinejad had won re-election by a ratio of almost two to one further cleaved Iranian society into rival camps.
On one side are the most powerful arms of the Islamic system of government: the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; the military; the paramilitary; and the Guardian Council. On the other is a diverse coalition that has grown emboldened by the day, with some clerics joining two former presidents and Mir Hussein Moussavi, the former prime minister and main opposition candidate, who addressed the crowd from the roof of a car near Freedom Square in downtown Tehran.
Protesters were especially enraged that Mr. Ahmadinejad on Sunday dismissed them as nothing more than soccer fans who had just lost a game and as “dust.” One demonstrator fired off a Twitter message, one of thousands of brief electronic dispatches that kept the outside world up-to-the-minute on the protests, proclaiming, “Ahmadinejad called us Dust, we showed him a sandstorm.”
Earlier Monday, Ayatollah Khamenei stepped in to try to calm a growing backlash, forcing him into a public role he generally seeks to avoid as the country’s top religious authority. Under Iran’s dual system of government, with civil and religious institutions, the supreme leader can usually operate in the shadows while elected officials serve as the public face of governance and policy.
He called for the Guardian Council to conduct an inquiry into the opposition’s claims that the election was rigged and then had that announcement repeated every 15 minutes on Iranian state radio throughout the day. It was a rare reversal.
Ayatollah Khamenei announced Saturday that the election results showing a landslide victory for Mr. Ahmadinejad were fair. But on Sunday he met with Mr. Moussavi, a moderate, to listen to his concerns. And on Monday, he promised the inquiry into the results.
Nevertheless, his announcement could not calm the anger of the people. There was so much distrust that some people said they believed the leader was just trying to buy time and to calm the crowds, rather than attempting to really investigate the outcome.
Hours later, a broad river of people in Tehran — young and old, dressed in traditional Islamic gowns and the latest Western fashions — marched slowly from Revolution Square to Freedom Square for more than three hours, many of them wearing the signature bright green ribbons of Mr. Moussavi’s campaign and holding up their hands in victory signs.
The silent march was a deliberate and striking contrast to the chaos of the past few days, when riot police officers sprayed tear gas and wielded clubs to disperse scattered bands of angry and frightened young people. When the occasional shout or chant went up, the crowd quickly hushed it, and some held up signs with the word silence.
“These people are not seeking a revolution,” said Ali Reza, a young actor in a brown T-shirt who stood for a moment watching on the rally’s sidelines. “We don’t want this regime to fall. We want our votes to be counted, because we want reforms, we want kindness, we want friendship with the world.”
Mr. Moussavi, who had called for the rally on Sunday but never received official permission for it, joined the crowd, as did Mohammad Khatami, the reformist former president. But the crowd was so vast, and communications had been so sporadic — the authorities have cut off phone and text-messaging services repeatedly in recent days — that many marchers seemed unaware they were there.
“We don’t really have a leader,” said Mahdiye, a 20-year-old student, who like many protesters declined to give a last name because of fears of repercussions. “Moussavi wants to do something, but they won’t let him. It is dangerous for him, and we don’t want to lose him. We don’t know how far this will go.”
