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In the wake of mass street protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's relection, meanwhile, Iran's Basij militia has called for the defeated opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi to be prosecuted. The semi-official Fars news agency said the militia - a volunteer force of Islamic government loyalists - had accused Mr Mousavi of nine offences, including propaganda against the state, and complicity in disrupting national security. It is our historic responsibility to continue our complaint and make efforts not to give up the rights of the people Mir Hossein MousaviIranian presidential candidate Iran frees five from UK embassy In a letter to the chief prosecutor, the militia said Mr Mousavi had been involved in the street protests, in which about 17 protesters and a number of militia members were killed.

In the wake of mass street protests against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's relection, meanwhile, Iran's Basij militia has called for the defeated opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi to be prosecuted. The semi-official Fars news agency said the militia - a volunteer force of Islamic government loyalists - had accused Mr Mousavi of nine offences, including propaganda against the state, and complicity in disrupting national security.

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,”

But analysts said the crackdown now taking place across Iran suggested that Mr. Ahmadinejad had succeeded in creating a pervasive network of important officials in the military, security agencies, and major media outlets, a new elite made especially formidable by support from one important constituent, Iran’s supreme leader himself.

Mr. Ahmadinejad has filled crucial ministries and other top posts with close friends and allies who have spread ideological and operational support for him nationwide. These analysts estimate that he has replaced 10,000 government employees to cement his loyalists through the bureaucracies, so that his allies run the organizations responsible for both the contested election returns and the official organs that have endorsed them.

There is a pattern to the way Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has selected allies throughout his career, said Said A. Arjomand, a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook who has just finished a book analyzing the rule of the supreme leader. The ayatollah has repeatedly surrounded himself with men lacking an apparent social or political base of their own, men who would be dependent on him, Mr. Arjomand said.

The grand ayatollah widely expected to follow him, Hossein Ali Montazeri, lost his place by expressing revulsion at violence committed in the name of the revolution. if ( show_doubleclick_ad && ( adTemplate & INLINE_ARTICLE_AD ) == INLINE_ARTICLE_AD && inlineAdGraf ) { placeAd('ARTICLE',commercialNode,20,'inline=y;',true) ; } "I surely would follow you up to the entrance of hell," Montazeri wrote to his mentor, Khomeini, in 1988, when political prisoners were being hanged by the hundreds each day. "But I am not ready to follow you in."

"There's a question in my mind whether Khamenei is calling the shots or whether the Revolutionary Guards are calling the shots

"Whether true or not, Khamenei has long believed that the U.S. is bent on regime change in Tehran, not via force but via a soft or velvet revolution," said Karim Sadjadpour, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "For the last 20 years, I imagine he goes to sleep at night and wakes up every morning mistrusting both outside powers and his own population. In that type of atmosphere of fear and mistrust, he's relied on the intelligence, security and military forces much more than the clergy."

clerics like Montazeri believe that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his protégé, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, use a distorted interpretation of Shiite theology for their own political ends. As a result, they believe Iran has become an un-Islamic, militarized state where Islamic militias repress the Iranian population in the name of God. There is another fact unknown to those unfamiliar with Iran: The youth are actually fond of some of the clerics, and shout their names at their demonstrations.

Khamenei's has, in turn, granted enormous power to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the basij, the Islamic militias under their command

This is not to say that the majority of clerics oppose Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. It is likely that the clerics are split, and even those who do not support Khamenei and Ahmadinejad might be unwilling to say so in public for a variety of reasons, including the fact that clerics rely on the state to some degree to fund their seminaries

Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi are planning a new demonstration in Tehran in protest at what they see as a fraudulent presidential poll in Iran.The planned rally comes after overnight raids on university dormitories in several Iranian cities and as two pro-reform figures were arrested. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has sought to calm tensions and called for an end to rioting.

Protests have grown since his re-election was confirmed on Saturday, with huge demonstrations in Tehran and clashes between protesters and security forces. Eight people have been killed.

Iran has imposed tough new restrictions on foreign media, requiring journalists to obtain explicit permission before covering any story. Journalists have also been banned from attending or reporting on any unauthorised demonstration.

"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."

"There are people in Iran who want to make this not about a debate among Iranians in Iran, but about the West and the United States," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. "I would add President Ahmadinejad to that list of people trying to make this about the United States."

He was speaking in response to an angry statement made by Mr Ahmadinejad on Thursday. He told Mr Obama to avoid "interfering in Iran's affairs". "Our question is why he fell into this trap and said things that previously [former US President George W] Bush used to say," Mr Ahmadinejad was quoted by the semi-official Fars news agency as saying.

At least 25 people - including eight members of the pro-government Basij militia - are reported to have been killed and dozens more wounded in the protests since the disputed election on 12 June.

Estimates of police and Guards deployed range from 25,000 to 60,000 in Tehran alone. And the Basij were busy overnight, keeping the pressure on reformists by carrying off several high profile home invasions in richer neighborhoods while scouring hospitals for people injured during the clashes.

According to the source that asked to remain anonymous, during this meeting they recounted memories of the days of the Revolution. A reasonable purpose of these meetings, according to the source, is that Rafsanjani is looking for a majority to possibly call for Ahmadinejad's resignation.

Many of the Shiite clerics in Qom never embraced the idea of either a supreme leader or a central role for clerics in the new Islamic republic. Iran's revolution represented not just a political upheaval. It was also a revolution within Shiism, which for 14 centuries had prohibited a clerical role in politics. With clerics taking over government, many senior Shiite clerics feared that Islam would end up being tainted by the human flaws of the state.

Meanwhile, the Iranian government complained to foreign ambassadors on Wednesday about what it called "meddlesome" and "impertinent" comments made about Iran's internal affairs. Among those summoned to the foreign ministry was the Swiss envoy who represents US interests in Iran. Iranian officials complained about Washington's "interventionist approach" on the election issue, but the White House has denied the accusation.

Among those reportedly detained on Wednesday were newspaper editor Saeed Laylaz and Hamid Reza Jalaipour, an activist and journalist.

Ebrahim Yazdi, a foreign minister after the 1979 revolution and now leader of the Freedom Movement of Iran, was arrested while undergoing tests at a hospital in Tehran, a spokesman for his organisation said. Members of the Basij militia have also reportedly raided universities in several Iranian cities, ransacking dormitories and beating up some students.

Riot police fired in the air to disperse pro-reform demonstrators in central Tehran on Thursday, nearly four weeks after a disputed election triggered mass protests across Iran, a witness said.

Police detained several people among hundreds of protesters who turned up near Tehran University in defiance of a ban on gatherings for the anniversary of violent student demonstrations in 1999, the witness told Reuters. Another witness said police also used tear gas.

Another witness at the scene in downtown Tehran said: "Police used tear gas twice to disperse the crowd. There were also many Basij militia on motorbikes patrolling the area."