READER COMMENT

The government at night announced 87 dead from the Jaleh Square incident. The clerical opposition claimed 2,000 to 3,000. These exaggerated figures come from the same clerics that ordered the burning of 400 Iranians at cinema rex and subsequently blamed the Shah's SAVAK. Such revolutionary propaganda was clearly to incite anger among the masses. Dr. Manoucher Ganji, at the time one of the Shah's ministers recalls General Oveissi's statement the day after the Jaleh Square incident:

"I swear to God and to my soldier's honor that their sharpshooters started firing into the crowd and toward the soldiers. Since yesterday I have more than thirty soldier families who are in mourning in Tehran alone. They also belong to this country..." (Defying the Iranian Revolution, Ganji).

General Oveissi was a great soldier that loved his country. According to numerous sources, he did not want violence to erupt at the Jaleh Square gathering. Crowd agitators and sharpshooters incited a bloody confrontation. "The revolution needs martyrs" Khomeini declared, and that's what the agitators and sharpshooters were there to make sure of. – A.R. Oveissi

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