TEHRAN, Iran — Iran denied reports that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's convoy sustained a grenade attack on Wednesday, according to state-run Press TV.
Citing a source within the president's office, the broadcaster said "no such attack took place."
"It was a firecracker," an official in the Ahmadinejad's media office told the Agence France-Presse news agency.
The BBC reported that state-run Arabic-language TV channel Al Alam reported that someone in the crowd set off the firecracker to cheer the president.
Earlier reports suggested that several people were wounded and that authorities had arrested one person.
Al Arabiya television reported that an attacker had thrown an explosive at Ahmadinejad's convoy before being detained. The bomb hit a car transporting journalists and presidential staff, the network said.
Conservative website khabaronline.ir said the device exploded about 100 yards away from the president's vehicle. "The explosion caused a lot of smoke," it said. The BBC noted that the report is no longer available on the site.
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"It wouldn't be surprising if the president's office tries to play this down. It's very difficult to say who could be behind it," IHS Global insight Middle East analyst Gala Riani told Reuters. Riani added that the president often travels outside Tehran, but that at most, "There have been occasions when people have thrown things at him or heckled him but that has been it."
Local Iranian TV and radio did not immediately report on the incident, NBC News said.
Images of Ahmadinejad traveling through the city of Hamedan showed him smiling and waving to crowds gathered along the route through the roof of a car.
Ahmadinejad was en route to make a speech at a sports stadium in the western city at the time of the reported incident. During his appearance on live Iranian television, he made no mention of any assault.
During a speech to a conference of expatriate Iranians in Tehran on Monday, Ahmadinejad said he believed he was the target of an assassination plot by Israel. "The stupid Zionists have hired mercenaries to assassinate me," he said.
The populist, hard-line Ahmadinejad has accumulated enemies in conservative and reformist circles in the Islamic Republic as well as abroad.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
