IT DIDN'T take long yesterday for the real power in Iran to come to the fore. As riot police rushed on to the streets of Tehran to crush any resistance to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election, backing came from the top.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Iranians to respect Ahmadinejad's victory in a presidential election that his closest challenger described as a "dangerous charade".
Khamenei, Iran's top authority, told defeated candidates and their supp
orters to avoid "provocative behaviour The chosen and respected president is the president of all the Iranian nation and everyone, including yesterday's competitors, must unanimously support and help him," Khamenei said in a statement read on state television.
Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli, an ally of the hardline Ahmadinejad, declared the president had been re-elected to a second four-year term with 62.6 per cent of the vote, against 33.7 per cent for Mousavi, in a record 85 per cent turnout.
Mousavi, a veteran of the 1979 Islamic revolution, protested against what he said were many obvious election violations. "I'm warning I will not surrender to this dangerous charade. The result of such performance by some officials will jeopardise the pillars of the Islamic Republic and will establish tyranny," Mousavi said.
Inflamed by his comments, thousands of Mousavi supporters took to the streets of the capital to vent their feelings.
Up to 2,000 Mousavi supporters also took part in a sit-in in the middle of the road, chanting: "Mousavi take back our vote! What happened to our vote?" Hundreds of the former prime minister's backers later gathered in side streets near Vanak, chanting anti-Ahmadinejad slogans and bringing traffic to a standstill. "We are Iranians too," and "Mousavi is our president," they shouted.
Demonstrators wearing the trademark green colour of Mousavi's campaign chanted slogans and set fire to barricades of tyres outside the Interior Ministry.
Riot police then attacked opposition supporters, beating them with clubs and smashing cars. A Reuters reporter said she and others were beaten by police with batons as police chased protestors. With claims that a commercial bank elsewhere in the city had been set on fire, police also moved to disperse any large gatherings of people.
Interior Minister Mahsouli, who supervised the elections and heads the nation's police forces, warned people not to join any "unauthorised gatherings. If there are gatherings in some places, people should not join them," he said. "Lets not give opportunities to people who aren't affiliated to any candidates."
The election pitted the conservative establishment headed by Ahmadinejad against a candidate with broad backing from the country's youth. Although, as the Interior Ministry confirmed, in Tehran itself, Mousavi won more votes than the incumbent, he was beaten 2 votes to 1 in the country as a whole.
The scale of the victory was greeted with disbelief by Iranian and Western analysts outside the Middle Eastern state. They said Ahmadinejad's re-election would disappoint Western powers aiming to convince Iran to halt work they suspect is aimed at making nuclear bombs, and could further complicate efforts by US President Barack Obama to reach out to Tehran.
Karim Sadjadpour, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said: "I don't think anyone anticipated this level of fraudulence. This was a selection, not an election. At least authoritarian regimes like Syria and Egypt have no democratic pretences. In retrospect it appears this entire campaign was a show: Ayatollah Khamenei wasn't ever going to let Ahmadinejad lose."
Ali Ansari, who heads the Institute for Iranian Studies at St Andrews University, said: "People in Iran will be in shock, not that Ahmadinejad has won, but that he has won on such a dramatic scale."
A bitterly fought campaign generated strong interest around the world and intense excitement inside Iran. It revealed deep divisions among establishment figures between those backing Ahmadinejad and those pushing for social and political change.
Ahmadinejad accused his rivals of undermining the Islamic Republic by advocating detente with the West. Mousavi said the president's "extremist" foreign policy had humiliated Iranians.
On Friday night, before official results emerged, Mousavi had claimed to be the "definite winner". He said many people had been unable to vote and ballot papers were lacking. He also accused authorities of blocking text messaging, via which his campaign tried to reach young, urban voters. Nationwide, the text messaging system remained down yesterday and several pro-Mousavi websites were blocked or difficult to access.
The 52-year-old president draws his bedrock support from rural areas and poorer big city neighbourhoods. Mousavi enjoys strong backing in wealthier urban centres, especially among women and the young. In Friday's poll, the two other candidates attracted only tiny voter support.
Ahmadinejad won power four years ago, vowing to revive the values of the 1979 Islamic revolution. He has expanded the nuclear programme, which Iran says is only for electricity generation, and stirred international outrage by calling for Israel to be wiped off the map.
Mousavi, 67, rejects Western demands that Iran halt uranium enrichment, but argued for a different approach to Iran-US ties and nuclear talks – although these are policy areas ultimately controlled by Ayatollah Khamenei.
But western leaders had hoped a Mousavi victory for would help ease tensions with the West, which is concerned about Tehran's nuclear plans, and improve chances of engagement with Obama, who has talked of a new start if Tehran "unclenches its fist".
Now they must again deal with Ahmadinejad, who has refused talks with six world powers over Iran's nuclear programme.
Elliott Abrams, a former senior Bush administration official now with the Council on Foreign Relations, said "The one hope might be that if a new Ahmadinejad government is viewed as illegitimate by many Iranians, that government might be anxious to avoid further economic distress. In that context, sanctions that bite might be a powerful tool and might push the regime into a serious negotiation."
