Tehran in 2009, however, was a struggle between two main factions, both of which supported the Islamic republic as it was. There were the clerics, who have dominated the regime since 1979 and had grown wealthy in the process. And there was Ahmadinejad, who felt the ruling clerical elite had betrayed the revolution with their personal excesses. And there also was the small faction the BBC and CNN kept focusing on ”” the demonstrators in the streets who want to dramatically liberalize the Islamic republic. This faction never stood a chance of taking power, whether by election or revolution. The two main factions used the third smaller faction in various ways, however. Ahmadinejad used it to make his case that the clerics who supported them, like Rafsanjani, would risk the revolution and play into the hands of the Americans and British to protect their own wealth. Meanwhile, Rafsanjani argued behind the scenes that the unrest was the tip of the iceberg, and that Ahmadinejad had to be replaced. Khamenei, an astute politician, examined the data and supported Ahmadinejad.

Now, as we saw after Tiananmen Square, we will see a reshuffling among the elite. Those who backed Mousavi will be on the defensive. By contrast, those who supported Ahmadinejad are in a powerful position. There is a massive crisis in the elite, but this crisis has nothing to do with liberalization: It has to do with power and prerogatives among the elite. Having been forced by the election and Khamenei to live with Ahmadinejad, some will make deals while some will fight ”” but Ahmadinejad is well-positioned to win this battle.

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Yet in the current demonstrations we are witnessing not just the end of the first stage of the Iranian democratic experiment, but the collapse of the structural underpinnings of the entire Islamic approach to modern political self-rule. Islam’s categorical imperative for both traditional and fundamentalist Muslims ””“commanding right and forbidding wrong” ”” is being transformed.

This imperative appears repeatedly in the Koran. Historically, it has been understood as a check on the corrupting, restive and libidinous side of the human soul. For modern Islamic militants, it is a war cry as well ”” a justification of the morals police in Saudi Arabia and Iran, of the young men who harass “improperly” attired Muslim women from Cairo to Copenhagen. It is the primary theological reason that Ayatollah Khamenei will try to stop a democratic triumph in his country, since real democracy would allow men, not God and his faithful guardians, the mullahs, to determine right and wrong.

Westerners would do well to understand the magnitude of what is transpiring in the Islamic Republic. Iran’s revolution shook the Islamic world. It was the first attempt by militant Muslims to prove that “Islam has all the answers” ”” or at least enough of them to run a modern state and make its citizenry more moral children of God. But the experiment has failed. The so-called June 12th revolution is the Iranian answer to the recurring hope in Islamic history that the world can be reborn closer to the Prophet Muhammad’s virtuous community. Millions of Iranians said in the presidential election, and more powerfully on the streets since, that they want out of Ayatollah Khomeini’s dream, which has become a nightmare.

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Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is threatening to crush any further opposition protests over the disputed presidential election and warns demonstrators to prepare for a “revolutionary confrontation” if they take to the streets again.

The country’s most powerful military force ordered demonstrators to “end the sabotage and rioting activities” and said their resistance is a “conspiracy” against Iran.

A statement posted Monday on the Guard’s Web site warned protesters to “be prepared for a resolution and revolutionary confrontation with the Guards, Basij and other security forces and disciplinary forces.”

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Iranian police have used water cannon, batons, tear gas and live rounds to break up protests over the presidential election, witnesses in Tehran say.

A BBC reporter said he saw one man shot and others injured amid running fights.

Defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi repeated calls for the election to be annulled on the grounds it was rigged.

US President Barack Obama urged Iran’s government “to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people”, saying the “world is watching”.

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The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said – “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

[KIM] LAWTON: But Ahmadinejad also has religious opposition, including from some clerics.

Abdo says it would be a mistake to see this as a secular-religious dispute.

Ms. [GENEIVE] ABDO: If you watch television you’d think that society is sharply divided between secularists supporting Moussavi, religious people supporting Ahmadinejad. The reality is much more complicated than that. Those supporting Moussavi are also religious. It’s not they don’t want clerics involved in politics, they don’t want clerics involved in their lives, it’s just certain clerics.

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It took years, if not decades, to correct this misinformation. The dubious reports from Iran, though of questionable significance in the first place, took, at most, a few days to dispel.

While it is less interesting to focus on the Internet””yes, the Internet in general””as a vital tool for Iranian dissidents, it’s necessary to point out that, for non-Iranians both observing and covering the rebellion, Twitter is playing a secondary role to websites like YouTube and Flickr, both of which have provided compelling images and video from the streets of Tehran. And while Twitter is not the reason students are on the streets, it has played a significant role in allowing the opposition to organize and spread its message to supporters in the West. To dismiss it as pure media hype would be foolish.

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Most of the time, foreign relations are kind of boring ”” negotiations, communiqués, soporific speeches. But then there are moments of radical discontinuity””1789, 1917, 1989””when the very logic of history flips.

At these moments ”” like the one in Iran right now ”” change is not generated incrementally from the top. Instead, power is radically dispersed. The real action is out on the streets. The future course of events is maximally uncertain.

The fate of nations is determined by glances and chance encounters: by the looks policemen give one another as a protesting crowd approaches down a boulevard; by the presence of a spontaneous leader who sets off a chant or a song and with it an emotional contagion; by a captain who either decides to kill his countrymen or not; by a shy woman who emerges from a throng to throw herself on the thugs who are pummeling a kid prone on the sidewalk.

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In his first public response to days of protests, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sternly warned opponents Friday to stay off the streets and denied opposition claims that last week’s disputed election was rigged, praising the ballot as an “epic moment that became a historic moment.”

In a somber and lengthy sermon at Friday prayers in Tehran, he called directly for an end to the protests by hundreds of thousands of Iranians demanding for a new election.

“Street challenge is not acceptable,” Ayatollah Khamenei said. “This is challenging democracy after the elections.” He said opposition leaders would be “held responsible for chaos” if they did not end the protests.

His remarks seemed to deepen the confrontation between Iran’s rulers and supporters of the main opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, who have accused the authorities of rigging the vote.

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Iran’s defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi issued a direct challenge to the country’s clerical regime today, calling for a mass rally to protest against the “shameful fraud” that saw Mahmoud Ahmadinejad re-elected by a landslide.

Mr Mousavi’s appeal to supporters, issued via his website, flew in the face of a declaration last night by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, that the former prime minister should pursue his objectives through the electoral system and not on the streets.

It also came despite a demand from the powerful Revolutionary Guard that websites and bloggers should remove any materials that “create tension”.

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ABBAS MILANI [Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University]: Yes, I think even the poll that Flynt refers to — if you look at the poll — first of all, it was done in May. It was done by telephone. Anyone who knows the Iranian situation would know that people are not likely to respond accurately to a phone that they received from Turkey.

And — but even in spite of this fiat (ph), if you look at the vote, 90 percent of the people thought that the most important issue for them is the economy. And we know what Ahmadinejad has done to the economy. Seventy-seven percent of them want the leader elected. Eighty-eight percent of them want improved trade with the West. Seventy percent of them think that
Iran should provide adequate guarantees to the West in return for — adequate guarantees about the nuclear program — in return for trade. Eighty-nine percent of them favor U.S. assistance to Iran. Fifty-two percent of them favor recognizing the state of Israel.

This is the poll that Mr. Leverett is pointing to. Are these the policies that Ahmadinejad supports? Is it likely that a population that has this sentiment, after Ahmadinejad performed in that debate the way McCarthy performed in this country, flashing the file, the intelligence file of the other candidate’s wife, are we to believe, that this is the historical reading, that Ahmadinejad won the election with these numbers?

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What I saw today was the most elegant scene I had ever witnessed in my life. The huge number of people were marching hand in hand in full peace. Silence. Silence was everywhere. There was no slogan. No violence. Hands were up in victory sign with green ribbons. People carried placards which read: Silence. Old and young, man and woman of all social groups were marching cheerfully. This was a magnificent show of solidarity….

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Thousands of both pro- and anti-government demonstrators began massing in the streets here on Tuesday, increasing tensions a day after clashes left at least seven people dead during the largest antigovernment demonstration since the Iranian revolution.

But despite the enormous pressure on the government to answer opposition charges of vote-rigging in last Friday’s presidential election, the country’s powerful Guardian Council said Tuesday that it was prepared to order only a partial recount, according to state television and news reports.

The leading opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, and other opponents of the declared winner, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, reportedly rejected the Guardian Council’s decision. They have held out for a new election to be held.

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Iran’s powerful Guardian Council says it is ready to recount disputed votes from Friday’s presidential poll.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election is being contested by rival Mir Hossein Mousavi and other moderate candidates, who are seeking a rerun.

The BBC’s Jon Leyne in Tehran says they may not accept the recount offer.

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For a time on Friday, it seemed that Mousavi might be able to call for an uprising in Tehran. But the moment passed when Ahmadinejad’s security forces on motorcycles intervened. And that leaves the West with its worst-case scenario: a democratically elected anti-liberal.

Western democracies assume that publics will elect liberals who will protect their rights. In reality, it’s a more complicated world. Hitler is the classic example of someone who came to power constitutionally, and then proceeded to gut the constitution. Similarly, Ahmadinejad’s victory is a triumph of both democracy and repression.

The question now is what will happen next. Internally, we can expect Ahmadinejad to consolidate his position under the cover of anti-corruption. He wants to clean up the ayatollahs, many of whom are his enemies. He will need the support of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This election has made Ahmadinejad a powerful president, perhaps the most powerful in Iran since the revolution. Ahmadinejad does not want to challenge Khamenei, and we suspect that Khamenei will not want to challenge Ahmadinejad. A forced marriage is emerging, one which may place many other religious leaders in a difficult position.

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Iran’s supreme leader today ordered an investigation into allegations of election fraud, marking a stunning turnaround by the country’s most powerful figure and offering hope to opposition forces who have waged street clashes to protest the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

State television quoted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei directing a high-level clerical panel, the Guardian Council, to look into charges by pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has said he is the rightful winner of Friday’s presidential election.

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Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech on the future of the Middle East peace process may have been the first time the Israeli Prime Minister publicly acknowledged a Palestinian state, but its lack of specific details prompted a bewildering array of responses, locally and internationally.

The United States and the European Union found themselves agreeing with the Yesha council, which represents Jewish settlements in the West Bank, in welcoming the Prime Minister’s address at a Tel Aviv university, while Hamas joined with the Israeli far-right in condemning it.

Most Israeli commentators poured scorn on the talk ”“ short on detail, and placing strict limits on any future Palestinian sovereignty ”“ but agreed its main audience had been President Obama, who has bluntly told the right-wing Israeli Government to accept a two-state solution and stop settlement building.

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The jokes among Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s detractors are legion. In one, he looks in the mirror and says, “Male lice to the right, female lice to the left.” In the West, one American tabloid rarely misses a chance to refer to him as “Evil Madman” and in the days before his re-election here he was taunted as a “monkey” and as a “midget.”

But the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who was announced winner of a second four-year term this week is no cartoon character.

Whether his 63 percent victory is truly the will of the people or the result of fraud, it demonstrated that Mr. Ahmadinejad is the shrewd and ruthless front man for a clerical, military and political elite that is more unified and emboldened than at any time since the 1979 revolution.

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Binyamin Netanyahu tonight endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state after weeks of pressure from Washington, but defied President Obama’s demand for a halt to all settlements.

In a high-profile speech that the Palestinian administration of Mahmoud Abbas said “hobbles all efforts to save the peace process”, the Israeli Prime Minister said that the Palestinians must recognise Israel as a “Jewish state” and that any future Palestinian state had to be demilitarised.

“If we have the guarantees on demilitarisation and if the Palestinians recognise Israel as the state of the Jewish people, then we arrive at a solution based on a demilitarised Palestinian state alongside Israel,” Mr Netanyahu said.

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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad brought tens of thousands of supporters into the heart of Tehran tonight in a bid to take back the capital after a weekend of vicious running battles between state security forces and large crowds of Iranians who insist that Mr Ahmadinejad stole last Friday’s presidential election.

Chanting ’Allah o’Akbar” (God is great) and “Ahmadi we love you”, the army of zealous hardliners poured into the central square in a massive show of strength designed to intimidate the furious supporters of Mr Ahmadinejad’s relatively moderate opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi.

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The BBC said Sunday that the satellites it uses to broadcast in Persian were being jammed from Iran, disrupting its reports on the hotly-disputed presidential election.

The corporation said television and radio services had been affected from 1245 GMT Friday onwards by “heavy electronic jamming” which had become “progressively worse”.

Satellite technicians had traced the interference to Iran, it said.

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Binyamin Netanyahu is expected to endorse a “two-state solution” in a much-heralded speech this weekend, but he may stall on American demands to freeze Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Feeling the squeeze between the US Administration, which wants a moratorium on settlement growth and a commitment to a Palestinian state, and his national-religious coalition, which favours neither, the Israeli Prime Minister appears likely to try to steer a middle course.

Israeli newspapers were full of speculation about what Mr Netanyahu ”” who has so far refused openly to back a Palestinian state alongside Israel ”” might offer to deflect pressure from Washington. Ehud Barak, his Defence Minister, urged him this week to recognise a Palestinian state, but members of Mr Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party have cautioned him against the move.

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The authorities declared Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the official winner of Iran’s presidential election on Saturday afternoon, but opposition candidates and their supporters insisted the election had been stolen, and riot police officers used batons and tear gas against thousands of demonstrators in the worst street protests in a decade.

Witnesses reported that at least one person had been shot dead in clashes with the police in Vanak Square in Tehran. Smoke from burning vehicles and tires hung over the city late Saturday.

The Interior Ministry said Mr. Ahmadinejad had won 62.6 percent of the vote, with Mir Hussein Moussavi, the leading challenger, taking just under 34 percent. Turnout was a record 85 percent, officials said.

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The offical news agency reported that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won, and the state elections chief said that the President had 69 per cent of the vote with 35 per cent of the ballots counted. However, the main challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, insisted that he was the “definite winner” by a substantial margin, and an aide suggested that he had taken 65 per cent.

The official result will be announced today, but the huge turnout ─ close to the historic record of 80 per cent ─ appeared to favour Mr Mousavi’s claim. Urban, middle-class Iranians, who seldom bother to vote, did so yesterday because they thought Mr Ahmadinejad’s first four years in office a disaster.

It was widely alleged, but never proved, that vote-rigging secured Mr Ahmadinejad’s unlikely victory in 2005. He entered that election an unknown, but was backed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader.

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Update: This reader comment is very interesting:

One more thing: do not discount the power of vote rigging. I expect the vote to be close, but anything that gives Ahmadinejad more than 60% of the vote has definitely been rigged. Of course, there are also more subtle ways of modifying the outcome: bussing his supporters to the booths with state funds, running out of ballot paper in the voting booths of Tehran, voter intimidation by armed thugs, and so on.

The two main candidates in Iran’s presidential election have claimed victory, after extended voting as huge numbers of people turned out to vote.

Reformist challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi told a news conference that he had won by a substantial margin.

However, state media said hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won, and officials said he had got 69% of the 10 million votes so far counted.

But Mr Mousavi has complained of some voting irregularities.

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I would be skeptical until tomorrow and results are finalized with some confidence.

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Standing in line to vote in a mosque polling station on Friday morning, Fatemah Moghaddasi left no doubt about who she was supporting in Iran’s presidential elections.

“We don’t want our country to be trapped in a no-hijab situation, with no discipline,” she said, clutching her black covering with one hand. “We will only accept Ahmadinejad.”

Ms. Moghaddasi was one of tens of millions of Iranians who crowded to the polls to take part in what is widely seen here as a referendum on the hard-line policies of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Turnout appeared to be extraordinarily high, with long lines forming outside some polling stations well before they opened at 8 a.m.

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In a makeshift campaign war room in north Tehran, two dozen young women clad in head scarves and black chadors are logging election data into desktop computers 24 hours a day, while men rush around them carrying voter surveys and district maps.

This nerve center in the campaign to unseat Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s hard-line president, is not run by any of the three candidates who are challenging him in a hotly contested election on Friday.

Instead, it is part of a bitter behind-the-scenes rivalry that has helped define the campaign, pitting Mr. Ahmadinejad against the man he beat in the last election, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a two-term former president and one of Iran’s richest and most powerful men.

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