Iran's opposition vows to go on challenging poll
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's reformist opposition leaders vowed to press on with legal challenges to an election they say was rigged, although the hardline government appeared on Thursday to have largely crushed mass street protests.
EDITORS' NOTE: Reuters and other foreign media are subject to Iranian restrictions on their ability to report, film or take pictures in Tehran.
The unrest has exposed unprecedented rifts within Iran's clerical establishment, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who normally stays above the political fray, siding strongly with anti-Western President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The turmoil has also dimmed prospects for President Barack Obama's outreach to Iran over its nuclear programme, with Tehran blaming Britain and the United States for fomenting violence.
Obama has ramped up his previously muted criticism, saying he was "appalled and outraged" by the post-election crackdown.
Khamenei has upheld the result of the June 12 presidential poll that returned Ahmadinejad and has warned opposition leaders they would be responsible for any bloodshed.
About 20 people have been killed in the demonstrations, but police and militia have flooded Tehran's streets since Saturday, quelling the majority of protests after the most widespread anti-government unrest since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
"My personal judgement is that this is a country deeply split and emotionalised," a Western diplomat in the region said. The protests had shown how dissatisfied some parts of society were with the way Iran was run -- to the chagrin of its leadership.
"I think they are deeply shocked," the diplomat said. The authorities had managed to impose outward stability, but had paid a heavy moral price, he added.
Riot police swiftly dispersed a group of about 200 demonstrators with teargas on Wednesday, but the protest was a far cry from marches last week that attracted tens of thousands.
Protest cries of Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest) were heard from Tehran rooftops again overnight, although they were much more short-lived than on previous evenings in the capital.
OPPOSITION LEADERS UNBOWED
Opposition leaders remained undaunted, even though they appeared to have lost the weapon of public protest.
Reformist cleric Mehdi Karoubi, who came last in the election, called the new government "illegitimate" and the wife of Mirhossein Mousavi, who says he won the poll, said it was a "duty to continue legal protests to preserve Iranian rights."
Mousavi is backed by influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pragmatist who favours a less combative foreign policy and who heads a council of clerics which, in theory at least, has the power to depose Khamenei.
Mousavi supporters said they would release thousands of balloons on Friday imprinted with the message "Neda you will always remain in our hearts" -- a reference to a young woman killed last week who has become an icon of the protests.
Mousavi says the election should be annulled but Iran's top legislative body, the Guardian Council, has ruled this out.
A spokesman for the council, which must approve the poll, said it had looked into all complaints but found no major fraud or irregularities, state Press TV reported on Thursday.
The spokesman said the vote was "among the healthiest elections ever held in the country" since the revolution.
Press TV said eight of those killed in the post-election unrest were pro-government militia members.
The United States withdrew invitations to Iranian diplomats to attend U.S. Independence Day celebrations on July 4.
It was the first time since Washington cut diplomatic ties with Tehran in 1980 that Iranian diplomats had been invited to the embassy parties, but the move to withdraw the invites was largely symbolic as no Iranians had even responded.
"The president's policy of engagement is obviously delayed, but we are going to have to deal with the government of Iran," Senator John Kerry, chairman of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Reuters.
The best U.S. option for pressuring Iran, the world's fifth biggest oil producer, was to drive down crude prices by reducing America's dependence on imported energy, Kerry said.
Mohammad Marandi, who is the head of North American Studies at Tehran University, said mistrust of the United States and Britain was rife, partly due to the "very negative" role of U.S.- and British-funded Persian-language television stations.
"They are working 24 hours a day spreading rumours and trying to turn people against each other," he told Reuters.
"In the short term relations will definitely get worse, but in the long term the U.S. really has to re-think its policy and to recognise that regime change is not possible in Iran."
(Additional reporting by Zahra Hosseinian and Hossein Jaseb; Editing by Alistair Lyon and Sophie Hares)