While much of the media and world attention was on the death of Michael Jackson, one of the largest rallies yet was held in Westwood Sunday to seek political reforms in Iran.

A crowd estimated by police at 5,000 people gathered at the Federal Building around 1 p.m. for an "Iranian Demonstration for Human Rights in West Los Angeles."

In addition to protesting what they consider to have been a rigged election, in which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected, they are seeking more freedom and equality in the Islamic state.

The protesters marched from the Federal Building near Veteran Avenue, up
Wilshire Boulevard to Westwood Boulevard, Santa Monica Boulevard and
Sepulveda Boulevard, then back to the Federal Building, according to the Los
Angeles Police Department.

"At its peak, there were about 5,000 people in attendance," said Officer Karen Rayner of the LAPD Media Relations Section. "There's about 500 people there still now," she said around 6:30 p.m.

The march was peaceful, with no arrests or injuries, she said.

The media spotlight has largely shifted away from the unrest in Iran, where there is a media blackout and government officials have been saying the
protests are fizzling out. Scores of reporters, activists and others have been
arrested since the election two weeks ago, and the official death count from
the protests has held at 17.

But Sunday, thousands of Iranians held an unauthorized demonstration in Tehran, defying club-wielding security forces and threats by Iranian leaders.

Supporters of presidential contender Mir-Hossein Mousavi went to a mosque in Tehran, and a witness told the Los Angeles Times that numerous opposition leaders attended the rally, including presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi; Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard; and both the daughter and wife of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a Mousavi supporter.

The witness told the newspaper that Basiji militia and plainclothes security personnel surrounded the rally and that Mousavi addressed the crowd by cellphone, which was hooked up to a megaphone, but the witness could not hear what he said.

Meantime, the political rhetoric is being ratcheted up by Iranian authorities and the Obama administration, and Iran arrested eight British Embassy staffers, claiming they were "playing major parts" in the protests. The United States has not had an embassy in Iran since the Iranian revolution of 1979.

The increasingly strident charges and counter-charges are making it more difficult to negotiate nuclear disarmament with the Iranians, according to
political analysts.