AP - Iran's women will be barred from
attending soccer games, a reversal by the president that comes a month
before the national team plays in the World Cup in Germany.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had ruled in
April that he would allow women to go to soccer games and sit in a separate
section of the stands. He wanted to "improve soccer-watching manners and
promote a healthy atmosphere."
But Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- who under the Islamic
Republic's constitution has the final say -- opposed the move.
"The president has decided to revise his decision based on the supreme
leader's opinion," Iranian government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham said
Monday.
Ahmadinejad's decision to allow women into stadiums had provoked outrage
among hardline Shiite Muslim clerics, who supported his election last year
and who have tightly controlled Iranian society since the 1979 Islamic
revolution.
