Ayatollah to crack down on Iranian protests

IRAN’S supreme leader last night sternly warned of a crackdown if protesters continue days of massive street rallies, escalating the government’s showdown with demonstrators demanding a new presidential election.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in his first response to the protests that the country’s disputed presidential vote had not been rigged, siding with hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and offering no concessions to the opposition.

He effectively ruled out any chance for a new vote, lauding the June 12 election as an expression of the people’s will. “Some of our enemies in different parts of the world intended to depict this absolute victory, this definitive victory, as a doubtful victory,” Khamenei said at prayers at Tehran University. “It is your victory. They cannot manipulate it.” The speech created a stark choice for defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and his supporters: drop their demands for a new vote or take to the streets again in defiance of the man endowed with virtually limitless powers under Iran’s constitution.

Pro-Mousavi websites had no immediate reaction to Khamenei’s warning. They did not announce changes in plans for a march today from Revolution Square to Freedom Square, the site of a massive rally last Monday that ended with fatal clashes between protesters and a pro-government militia.

That was followed by three consecutive days of protest that have posed the greatest challenge to Iran’s Islamic ruling system since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought it to power.

So far, the government has not stopped the protests with force despite an official ban on them. But Khamenei opened the door for harsher measures. “It must be determined at the ballot box what the people want and what they don’t want, not in the streets,” he said. “I call on all to put an end to this method... If they don’t, they will be held responsible for the chaos and the consequences.”

Khamenei accused foreign media and Western countries of trying to stir up chaos in Iran.

US President Barack Obama has taken a cautious line on the election dispute, expressing sympathy with protesters, but avoiding condemnation of the Islamic government. Obama said on Tuesday that opposition to Ahmadinejad represented “a questioning of the kinds of antagonistic postures towards the international community that have taken place in the past, and that there are people who want to see greater openness and greater debate and want to see greater democracy”.

Khamenei reacted strongly, saying Obama’s statements contradicted the president’s stated goal of opening dialogue with Iran. Khamenei remained staunch in his defence of Ahmadinejad, saying his views were closer to the president’s than to those of former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, a powerful patron of Mousavi.

Ahmadinejad watched the sermon from the front row, but there was no sign of Mousavi.