The Yemen - Iran Spat Spreads to Street Names
The Media Line
24-Nov-2009

Yemen and Iran are knocking each other through street names.

Iran has reportedly changed the name of a central street in Tehran to that of a Yemeni, a move likely to anger the Yemeni government.

Iranian diplomats denied reports they had renamed the street after the late rebel leader Hussein Badr A-Din Al-Houthi, whose followers are currently engaged in a civil war with the national Yemeni army.

Local media reported the inauguration of Al-Houthi Street in Iran’s capital Tehran as being in retaliation to calls from within Yemen to change ‘Iran Street’ in the Yemeni capital Sanaa to ‘Neda Soltani Street’, in honor of a young woman killed during the post-election riots in Iran last June.

Soltani has become a symbol of the Iranian reformist opposition. Her death during the election protests was caught on film and broadcast around the world, drawing wide international attention and stirring anger against the Iranian government.

Nadia Al-Sakkaf, Editor-in-Chief of the Yemen Times, said she had not heard of plans to rename ‘Iran Street’, located in a relatively developed and modern neighborhood of the Yemeni capital.

“I find it strange because it’s not that easy to change street names,” she told The Media Line.

Al-Sakkaf said both the Iranian intervention into th... >>>

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