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EU threatens mass pullout of ambassadors from Tehran Buzz up! Digg it Ian Black, Middle East editor guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 June 2009 20.06 BST Article history European Union members are threatening the collective withdrawal of their ambassadors from Iran to secure the release of the British embassy employees being held by the authorities.

European Union members are threatening the collective withdrawal of their ambassadors from Iran to secure the release of the British embassy employees being held by the authorities.

EU diplomats said tonight all the envoys could be recalled "temporarily" in solidarity with staff from the British mission in Tehran who have been accused – entirely falsely, UK officials insist – of involvement in protests over the "stolen" presidential election.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leading opposition candidate, had called for a fresh election and he was reported to be reluctant to go along with a recount conducted by the guardian council, a deeply conservative group of Islamic jurists.The council referred to the results declared by Khamenei as ­"provisional", an important symbolic concession. "It is possible that there may be some changes in the tally after the recount," said a spokesman, Abbasali Kadkhodai.

"Based on the law, the demand of those candidates for the cancellation of the vote – this cannot be considered," he told state television.

observers said it was unlikely an establishment body such as the guardian council would rigorously assess how the election was conducted. Half the council is appointed by Khamenei and its ­chairman, Ahmad Jannati, is a hardliner and Khamenei ally. Another council spokesman said the vote had "the least amount of violations reported" of any Iranian election.

Iran's top legislative body says it is investigating 646 complaints from the three defeated presidential candidates over last week's election.The powerful Guardian Council said it had invited Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezai to a meeting on Saturday to discuss the complaints. Another key body has raised eyebrows by failing to endorse the election result.

Guardian Council spokesman Abbasali Khadkhodai said a "careful examination" of the 646 complaints from the three candidates had begun. "We decided to personally invite the esteemed candidates and those who have complaints regarding the election to take part in an extraordinary session of the Guardian Council on Saturday," he said.

The Guardian Council - made up of six clerics and six lawyers - is traditionally loyal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The powerful Guardian Council touched off scattered protests in Tehran Monday night when it formally certified the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a second four-year term, saying there was no validity to charges of voting fraud.

As the certification was announced, security and militia forces flooded the streets, and protesters who were already out marching down Tehran’s central avenue, Vali Asr, broke into furious chants. The marchers were quickly dispersed, but other Iranians, urged by opposition Web sites, went to their rooftops to yell “God is great!” in a show of defiance.

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the Guardian Council’s secretary, sent a letter to the interior minister saying the panel had approved the election after a partial recount, according to state television. “The Guardian Council, by reviewing the issues in many meetings and not considering the complaints and protest as valid, verifies the 10th presidential election,”

Despite new international criticism, the Iranian authorities showed no sign Friday of bending to domestic or foreign pressure, insisting that the disputed presidential vote on June 12 was the “healthiest” in three decades.

The uncompromising words emerged as the Group of Eight countries, including the United States, mounted a fresh broadside Friday saying they “deplored” the post-election violence and demanding that the “the will of the Iranian people is reflected in the electoral process.”

At Friday prayers at Tehran university, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami referred to the demonstrators as rioters and declared, “I want the judiciary to punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson.” Reuters quoted him as saying demonstrators should be tried for waging war against God. The punishment for such offenses under Islamic law is death, Reuters said.

Britain has ordered the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats, in a tit-for-tat response to the expulsion of two British diplomats from Tehran.

Barack Obama for the first time condemned the violence in Iran, saying the international community was "appalled and outraged" by Tehran's crackdown on protesters.Going well beyond his previous expressions of sympathy with the demonstrators, he said: "I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost."

The Iranian government told Britain yesterday it was throwing out two UK diplomats, who have not been named, for "activities incompatible with their diplomatic status" – a claim Gordon Brown described as "unjustified".

Iran's legislative body, the Guardian Council, has said there were no major polling irregularities in the 12 June election and ruled out an annulment.

Guardian Council spokesman Abbas Ali Kadkhoda'i was quoted on state television as saying there was "no major fraud or breach in the election".

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon earlier called for an end to violence. Mr Ban urged the authorities in Iran to respect fundamental civil rights, "especially the freedom of assembly and expression", and end arrests.

a delegation from the Guardian Council's members visited the religious leaders and ayatollahs in Qom to get their public support for the legitimacy of the election and the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term. But an Iranian source told Asharq Al-Awsat: "But praise be to God, the sources of emulation did not support the demands" of the Guardian Council

members of the Guardian Council, the body supervising the election, visited the Shiite seminary in Qom and met the sources of emulation there and that Great Ayatollah Safi Golpaygani, one of the most important sources of emulation in the seminary, was among those they met. The source, which it cannot be identified, said Ayatollah Golpaygani urged the Guardian Council "to be above politics and exercise its role as a neutral arbiter between the political parties and not lean toward one party at the expense of the other."

The Iranian source pointed out that the senior religious leaders in Qom and its seminary prefer to be "above the political tendencies" and they include those with strong influence in Qom and its seminary who have a voice in the decision-making centers in Tehran due to their religious status such as Ayatollah Makarem-Shirazi, Ayatollah Vahidi, and Ayatollah Zanjani. Ayatollahs Amini and Javadi-Amoli took a neutral stand during the present crisis and called for listening to the voice of the Iranian street and reformists and examining the violations and complaints neutrally.

The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.

A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final.

“This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic,” said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University.

The Obama administration moved today to resume high-level relations with Moscow when Hillary Clinton led a western push to revive contacts between Russia and Nato.Making her European debut as secretary of state, Clinton told a meeting of Nato foreign ministers that Washington wanted "a fresh start" in relations with Moscow.

"I don't think you punish Russia by stopping conversation with them," she said, adding that there could be benefits to the better relationship. "We not only can but must co-operate with Russia."

The meeting in Brussels agreed to reinstate the work of the Nato-Russia council, a consultative body that was frozen last year in protest at Moscow's invasion and partition of Georgia.

One of the three defeated candidates, Mohsen Rezai, a conservative, has now withdrawn his complaint about the poll. Barack Obama has condemned the "unjust" violence used against protesters.

The US president's comments came as the UK expelled two Iranian diplomats in response to the expulsion of two of its own officials from Tehran.

The Iranian authorities have accused Britain and the US of trying to destabilise the country, something they have denied.

the accusations and the insults that Ahmadinejad directed at some of the most senior politicians such as Hashemi Rafsanjani, Mohammed Khatami and even Natiq Nouri – who is one of the most senior advisers to the Supreme Leader whose children Ahmadinejad accused of accumulating wealth illicitly – not only deepens divisions between different branches of the government but also brought these divisions into public view for the first time and in an unprecedented manner.

In the letter, Rafsanjani requested that Khamanei break his silence but what happened on Saturday morning, a few hours after the elections, and even before the final results were announced, was that Khamanei rushed to congratulate Ahmadinejad and endorsed the results. That was not normal at all because usually after elections the Council of Guardians and the Ministry of Interior await complaints that may be raised by parties taking part in the elections, expecting there to have been irregularities. Presidential candidates have the right to raise complaints before the results are verified but the Supreme Leader did not wait for this process to take place and he quickly congratulated Ahmadinejad who in turn called on his supporters to celebrate in Vali Asr in Tehran and Iranian state television began to broadcast messages of congratulations from various leaders and presidents to Ahmadinejad on his reelection.

if the results weren’t final and the candidates could raise their complaints how could the Supreme Leader declare his support for the results? The Supreme Leader’s behavior caused a lot of serious questions to be raised by the grand Ayatollahs in Iran and members of the Assembly of Experts headed by Rafsanjani, which has the right to dismiss the Supreme Leader according to the Constitution. It raised many questions about the Supreme Leader’s validity.

"The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings, and imprisonments of the last few days," he said. "I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost."

Obama spoke of the "searing image" of the dying moments of Neda ­Soltan, a young female protester shot by a sniper and now an icon of the revolt. He said the demonstrators would ultimately be seen to have been "on the right side of history". The regime's accusations against foreigners were "an obvious attempt to distract people from what is truly taking place within Iran's borders".

He added: "This tired strategy of using old tensions to scapegoat other countries won't work any more in Iran."

A daughter of former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a rival of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been released from detention, state television said on Monday. Iran's English-language Press TV had reported that Faezeh Rafsanjani and four other relatives of the former president were detained during an unauthorized protest in Tehran on Saturday. The four other relatives were freed earlier.

Last week, the semi-official Fars News Agency said Faezeh and her brother Mehdi had been barred from leaving Iran.

According to a report in the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, Rafsanjani is contemplating the formation of a distinct body of clerics that would serve as an alternative to the ruling council of ayatollahs. The report stated that the former president, who is based in the town of Qom, which is thought of as a religious stronghold, has already consulted other prominent clerics on possible future steps against his chief rival, Khamenei.

Iran's Guardian Council, the country's highest legislative body, has admitted some irregularities occurred in the disputed June 12 presidential election.

Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei, a spokesman for the council, told state-funded broadcaster IRIB on Monday that up to three million votes were under scrutiny, after it was found that the number of votes exceeded the number of eligible voters in 50 cities.  However, he said it was a normal discrepancy because people are allowed to travel to other areas to vote, and that it was "yet to be determined whether the amount is decisive in the election results".

The government is blaming the crisis on what it calls "terrorists" influenced by the West, and has said it will clamp down on any violent action. "The first issue is security - no country will deal with other issues and then talk about security,"  Hassan Ghashghavi, a spokesman for Iran's foreign ministry said on Monday. "First, security must be there, and then you can talk about elections, freedom, human rights and democracy."

Western powers are seeking to undermine Iran by spreading "anarchy and vandalism", the foreign ministry says.A spokesman said foreign media were "mouthpieces" of enemy governments seeking Iran's disintegration.

Iran's Guardian Council says it found irregularities in 50 constituencies, but denied that affected the result.

At least 10 people were reported to have been killed in clashes between protesters and police and militia forces on Saturday.

A camp of pragmatic clerics and politicians led by Rafsanjani, while loyal to the revolution's principles, wants to build better ties with the West and a more friendly image of Iran."What is clear is that the leadership is far more polarized and splintered than has been clear in the past," said Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon analyst with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Now that the leader has made clear he was supportive of Ahmadinejad and sharing the same vision of the future of the Islamic Republic, it can be taken as a major defeat for Rafsanjani and for the political options he promotes," said Frederic Tellier, an Iran expert in the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank.

Rafsanjani was president between 1989 and 1997, but failed to win a third term when in 2005, losing to Ahmadinejad in a runoff. He was a close follower of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, father of Iran's Islamic Revolution. He now heads the Expediency Council, a body that arbitrates disputes between parliament and the unelected Guardian Council, which can block legislation.He also is the head of the powerful Assembly of Experts, which comprises senior clerics who can elect and dismiss the country's supreme leader.

The Taepodong-2 rocket flew twice as far as any previous North Korean missile.

Although Obama described the action as a "provocation", the US and Japan have so far failed to win support from China and Russia for a statement condemning Pyongyang and tightening existing sanctions.

The Japanese foreign minister, Hirofumi Nakasone, today admitted there were divisions in the security council."China and Russia share the concern that this is a threat to the region, but they appear reserved and cautious as of now," he told reporters in Tokyo.

Originally the constitution allowed for the selection of either a single individual to the post of Supreme Leader or a council of appropriate individuals to run the post. The selection process of the Assembly of Experts would be done by continuously reviewing his/their performance (Articles 108 and 111). Later revisions to the constitution removed the potential for a council of individuals, making it so only a single individual could be elected by the Assembly as Supreme Leader.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was elected the chairman of the Assembly of Experts during its morning session on 04 September 2007 [Shahrivar 13, 1386]. Rafsanjani’s election is significant because prior to the meeting of the Assembly of Experts, the conservative supporters of the president tried to advance their own candidates Mohammad Taghi, Mesbah Yazdi, and Ahmad Jannati for the head of the assembly with deliberate and sometimes hidden attacks on Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Despite these attempts and the positioning of Ahmad Jannati, chairman of the guardian council, as a rival candidate to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the conservatives failed to achieve their goal.