TEHRAN, March 16 (AFP) -- Tehran's conservative authorities have officially allowed the city's youth to celebrate the annual "pagan" fire festival, breaking a hard line going back years but at the same time ensuring better control.
"The Municipality has decided to make 40 city squares available for the celebrations," deputy mayor Mohammad Javad Mohammadizadeh, a member of the conservative council elected in February last year, was quoted Tuesday as saying.
"Firefighters will be fully mobilised and deployed in those squares to avoid any incidents," he added.
For centuries Iranians have jumped over bonfires to purify themselves and chase away evil spirits on the last Tuesday night before the New Year celebrations at around the spring equinox.
The rite marking the end of winter and including the setting off of fireworks dates back to pre-Islamic Zoroastrian times and Muslim clerics have tried in vain to prevent it each year.
But they are confronted by an expanding young generation eager for amusement and opportunities for meeting each other, and the Islamic republic's authorities have ended up tolerating the practice.
Even so, every year sees arrests and clashes with police out on the streets in force, as the celebrants compete with each other in the manufacture of bigger and louder fireworks.
These mini-bombs include gas canisters which are blown up at crossroads.
Last year, according to press reports, 28 people, mainly teenagers, were injured and around 100 arrested.
However Tehran police this year also took a conciliatory tone.
"We have nothing against celebrations and merry-making," police chief Morteza Talaie was quoted as saying, "as long as the limits are not exceeded."
Police have been told not to prevent the sale of fireworks as long as they are not dangerous.
The official attitude to the festival known as "chaharshanbeh suri" is in line with the image of pragmatism coupled with proper respect for Islamic values that the new conservative authorities have tried to foster since taking over from a reformist municipality that collapsed amid infighting.
This policy is also being pushed by conservatives who took control of parliament in controversial elections last month after hundreds of reformist candidates were disqualified by a conservative watchdog body.
But some hardliners are not happy.
Conservative cleric Ayatollah Safi Gholpayegani condemned the fire festival as "unworthy of the Iranian Muslim people".
"Those who take part are ignoramuses," he was quoted as saying in the press, accusing "pseudo-intellectuals, liberal journalists and foreign propaganda organs" of supporting the event in order to harm Islamic culture.
The ayatollah stormed at "attempts to make this feast official", particularly as this year it falls during the Shiite mourning month and coincides with Wednesday's commemoration of the martyrdom of Zeinolabedin, one of the 12 imams revered by Shiites.
Calling on his "brothers and sisters in belief", the ayatollah said, "Muslims and Shiites expect you to remember the martyrdom of this distinguished man, indicate your hatred for obscurantist culture and take part in magnificent ceremonies to destroy our enemies."