Khamenei vows no retreat on Iran election result

story by Reuters

written by Zahra Hosseinian and Hossein Jaseb

TEHRAN – Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared on Wednesday that a disputed election result would stand, despite street protests that Iranian officials say Britain and the United States have incited.

(EDITORS' NOTE: Reuters and other foreign media are subject to Iranian restrictions on their ability to report, film or take pictures in Tehran.)

The opposition refused to be bowed, with reformist cleric Mehdi Karoubi, who came last in the June 12 presidential election, calling the new government "illegitimate" and around 200 protesters braving the security crackdown near parliament.

"About 200 people have gathered near the parliament building to protest against the election result but I do not see any clashes," a witness told Reuters.

Anti-riot police and militia have largely succeeded in taking back control of the streets this week after the biggest anti-government protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The hardline leadership is refusing to give ground.

"I had insisted and will insist on implementing the law on the election issue," said Khamenei, the most powerful figure in Iran. "Neither the establishment nor the nation will yield to pressure at any cost."

Iran is blaming the discontent on foreign powers.

"Britain, America and the Zionist regime (Israel) were behind the recent unrest in Tehran," Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli said, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran was weighing whether to downgrade ties with Britain after each country expelled two diplomats this week. He also announced he had "no plans" to attend a G8 meeting in Italy this week on Afghanistan.

His remarks, a day after U.S. President Barack Obama said he was "appalled and outraged" by the clampdown in Iran, provided more evidence of rising tension with the West.

Obama called Iran's accusations that Washington was stoking unrest "patently false and absurd." Britain also denies the charge.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, asked if Paris planned to cut ties with Tehran, said it had no such plans but could do so if Iran continued to expel diplomats.

Western diplomats had seen the June 25-27 Group of Eight talks as a rare chance for the G8 to discuss with regional powers such as Iran shared goals for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The unexpected upheaval in Iran has also thrown a spanner into Obama's plans to engage the Islamic Republic in a substantive dialogue over its nuclear program, which Tehran says is peaceful but which the West suspects is for bomb-making.

Security forces have clamped a tight grip on Tehran to prevent more rallies against the June 12 poll, which reformists say was rigged to return President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power and keep out moderate former Prime Minister Mirhossein Mousavi.

DEEP DIVISIONS

The furor over the election has exposed deep rifts within Iran's political elite, with Khamenei solidly backing Ahmadinejad against Mousavi, who has the support of former presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami.

Many of Iran's senior Shi'ite clerics in the holy city of Qom have stayed out of the political fray, although Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri has called for three days of national mourning from Wednesday for those killed in protests.

Montazeri was once named successor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but fell out with the father of the revolution before he died in 1989. He has spent years under house arrest in Qom.

Up to 20 people have been killed in the protests, according to Iran's state English-language Press TV. Amateur footage of clashes with security men, and of some of the deaths, has been posted on the Internet and viewed around the world.

Karoubi postponed planned nationwide mourning ceremonies for the dead on Thursday because he could not find venues for the ceremonies, his website said.

Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, demanded the immediate release of people detained since the election -- who include 25 employees of her husband's newspaper -- and criticized the presence of armed forces in the streets, his website reported.

"It is my duty to continue legal protests to preserve Iranian rights," Rahnavard, who actively campaigned with her husband before the election, was quoted as saying.

Intelligence Minister Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei said some British passport-holders had been involved in "riots," Fars news agency reported. One detainee was "disguised as a journalist" and had been "collecting information needed by the enemies."

Fars said on Tuesday a Greek journalist covering the election for the Washington Times had been arrested.

Iranian allegations of foreign meddling were seen in Britain as an attempt to deflect blame for the unrest.

"I think it's a lot to do with trying to create national unity by creating a common external enemy which is traditionally the British," Claire Spencer, head of the Middle East and North Africa program at the Chatham House thinktank, told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi, Fredrik Dahl and Hashem Kalantari; editing by Jon Hemming)