Los Angeles police arrested a 48-year-old man Sunday on suspicion of reckless driving after he steered a U-Haul box truck toward demonstrators gathered in the city’s Westwood neighborhood in solidarity with Iran’s protest movement, the department said. No one was struck by the truck, police confirmed, though two people declined treatment after paramedics evaluated them at the scene. The driver was released Monday without being formally charged.
The incident occurred as Iranian diaspora communities across the United States organized solidarity demonstrations with protesters inside Iran, where activists said nearly 600 people had been killed amid the government’s response to nationwide unrest.
Officers monitoring the Sunday afternoon demonstration stopped the box truck and directed the driver to turn around as he approached a large crowd, the Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement. Video posted to social media showed the truck moving at speed down a road where demonstrators had gathered on the sidewalk.
Demonstrators descended on the vehicle and tore off a banner affixed to it that read “No Shah. No Regime. USA: Don’t Repeat 1953. No Mullah.” The crowd attacked the driver, who then drove the truck toward a group of officers as demonstrators jumped clear, police said. Officers formed a line between the crowd and the driver before taking him into custody.
The vehicle came to a stop several blocks away with its windshield, mirrors, and a window shattered, according to aerial news footage. Investigators searched the truck and found nothing significant, the LAPD said. The city attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment about potential charges.
The protest gathered in Westwood, a neighborhood the Associated Press described as home to the largest Iranian community outside of Iran. Some demonstrators waved Iran’s lion and sun flag, the emblem of the pre-1979 monarchic government of the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Some Iranians have chanted pro-shah slogans at the demonstrations, the AP reported, while others in the Iranian diaspora support ending the current government’s rule but oppose a return to monarchy.
The banner’s reference to 1953 appeared to invoke a U.S.-backed coup that toppled Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh after he nationalized Iran’s oil industry. That coup consolidated the shah’s power; the 1979 Islamic Revolution under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini followed.
Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late shah who lives in exile in the United States, has called on Iranians to join the demonstrations, the AP reported. President Donald Trump has threatened Iran with military action over its response to the nationwide protests, according to the Associated Press.