(4 Oct 2013) Iranians chanted "Death to America" and burned the US flag after weekly prayers in Tehran on Friday despite their new president's outreach to the West and promises of moderation and easing of tensions with the outside world.
During prayers Friday in Tehran, the master-of-ceremonies led the crowd into chants of "Death to America" at least twice from the podium.
However, Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi, a cleric who led the prayers, tried to strike a middle ground, saying that America and Iran should "join hands" in a struggle to overcome sanctions that have crippled Iran's economy.
Sedighi criticised Washington over the threat of new punitive measures against Iran and urged Obama to work with new president Hassan Rouhani in lifting the sanctions, which the cleric said had hurt not only people in Iran but also in the wider region, the US and Europe.
"The president of the US, after changing his stances, should not be affected by the prime minister of the fake, weak and despicable regime (of Israel) and should not change his tone so quickly," Sedighi said.
Another speaker on Friday, Mohammad Hossein Saffar Harandi who is part of an advisory council to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the US decided to work things out with Iran through diplomacy because of the crisis it faces over the Syrian conflict.
"To be realistic, I'd say yes, we also need to interact with the world, it is not sensible to say that we don't need (the West)," Harandi said.
"At least for easing some of their evil deeds, namely imposing brutal conditions and various sanctions, which have become more severe in the past few years, yes, we'd like to (engage with them), we are keen," he added.
When the crowd erupted into another "Death to America" chant, Harandi said that he did not raise that slogan that the crowd were chanting.
The chant was then repeated several times by a group of worshippers who rallied after the ceremony, burning the American and Israeli flags, as they do almost every week.
The chants, customary after Friday services, reflect the challenges facing Rouhani as he tries to build on the groundbreaking exchanges with Washington that included a telephone chat last week with President Barack Obama - a gesture aimed at ending three decades of estrangement between the two countries.
Rouhani's overtures have been hailed by both Iranian reformists and the country's conservative clerical leadership.
But a wide array of Iranian hard-liners oppose any improved contact with the Unites States.
"People have very bad memories of hostile American policies, which need to be forgotten. Memories like shooting down an Iranian Airbus plane and various coups," a hardline protester said referring to the US' involvement in the 1953 coup that toppled the Iranian Prime Minster Mohammad Mossadegh, who nationalised Iran's oil industry.
He also referred to the incident on July 3, 1988, in which the US navy's USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian passenger plane flying above the Persian Gulf, in which 290 civilians were killed.
Diplomatic relations between the two countries were cut after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the storming of the US Embassy in Tehran, when militants held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

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