Iranian opposition leader hails Egypt protests

[oberliner]

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's opposition leader expressed hope Saturday that protests engulfing Egypt can bring the kind of change that has so far evaded his own country.

Mir Hossein Mousavi compared the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen with the protest movement that followed the 2009 disputed presidential election in Iran.

Mousavi, who claims to have been the real victor in the vote, said Iran's protest movement was the starting point but all aimed at ending the "oppression of the rulers."

The wave of protests that erupted after the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the biggest challenge faced by Iran's clerical leadership since it came to power in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in support of Mousavi, and some powerful clerics sided with the opposition.

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