Pandemic forces Iran to cancel mass marches for revolution anniversary
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Iran’s state-organized marches marking the anniversary of its 1979 revolution had to be reduced to vehicle parades. Yet Iranian officials found their own ways to address tensions with the West.
COVID-19 concerns forced Iranian authorities to cancel the typically flamboyant annual rallies on the Feb. 10 anniversary of the Islamic Revolution that overthrew the Pahlavi Dynasty in 1979.
Instead, this year’s event was characterized by street parades involving private vehicles, motorcycles and bicycles. “Yet another epic and different presence of the nation,” the state-funded IRNA News Agency wrote.
Traditionally, crowds at such anniversary rallies have been addressed by sitting presidents at Tehran’s iconic Azadi Square. Particularly wary of the virus, President Hassan Rouhani has been avoiding almost every public event since the start of the pandemic last year. He therefore decided to make his speech to the vehicle parades a televised one in which he praised his nation’s “victory against pressure.”
Earlier, Rouhani addressed a ceremony where ambassadors and heads of foreign missions in Tehran had gathered to “congratulate the Iranian president on the revolution anniversary.”
