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According to a report by the now-banned website Rooyeh.com, Hashemi Rafsanjani, the head of the Assembly of Experts, had meetings in the city of Qom, with some of the high ranking clerics including the plenipotentiary representative of Grand Ayatollah Sistani. The dates of the meetings are not specified

According to this report, an anonymous source claimed that Rafsanjani had reminded the Ayatollahs of how Ayatollah Khomeini managed such crises in the early days of the Islamic revolution. The source also claimed that half of the Assembly of Experts were supporting the idea of declaring a “leadership counsel” (instead of a one person leadership)

Former Iranian President Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is considered to be the second most important figure in the country's regime, is looking into different ways to end the political crisis in Iran, and is mulling the possibility of setting up a new religious body, Al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper reported on Monday.

According to the report, the former president and head of the cleric-run Assembly of Experts who is also one of defeated reformist candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi's top supporters, has relocated from the flammable capital of Tehran, to the Shiite holy city of Qom, where the country's religious leaders sit.

Rafsanjani arrived in the city a few days ago and met with several religious leaders and members of the Assembly of Experts, which is responsible for monitoring Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.  

Although the president has the support of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC), the clerics still have considerable power over the country's charitable foundations (Bonyads). These multibillion dollar business organizations don't report their income or pay taxes. They report directly to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Their participation in the economy is crucial. They could make life difficult for Ahmadinejad's presidency by increasing their business clout in areas where the IRGC is trying to muscle in. These industries include energy, construction and the import/export sector. Last year, these clerics scored a major victory. Bonyade Mostazafin (Charity foundation for the dispossessed) was allowed to buy and sell oil, allowing them to compete directly with Iran's National Oil Company. This raised the fury of Ahmadinejad's supporters. As means of checking Ahmadinejad's power, they could expand further into this sector, or compete in the lucrative construction sector. These companies also have huge financial assets. These can be used to finance new businesses which compete directly with the IRGC.

They could also side with Ayatollah Rafsanjani. It is an accepted fact that Rafsanjani financed part of Mousavi's campaign. This obviously dented Ahmadinejad's popularity. So much so, apparently, that Ayatollah Khamenei felt compelled to assist the president by allowing fraud. Rafsanjani is already a millionaire many times over. Should the clergy start helping him financially, using his political muscle in the Assembly of Experts and the Expediency Council, he could further challenge Ahmadinejad politically.

A political party affiliated with Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the former president and key member of the Iranian regime, on Sunday called on Mir-Hossein Moussavi, the opposition leader, to form a “political bloc” that would pursue a long-term campaign to undermine the “illegitimate” government. Hossein Marashi, spokesman for the Kargozaran, stayed clear of directly challenging the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but told the Financial Times in a telephone interview that Mr Moussavi was now the leader of an opposition that was not without options.

“With the lack of legitimacy of the Ahmadi-Nejad government, sooner or later the country’s management will face various crises,” he said. “Mr Moussavi should set up an official political front which can embrace the defenders of the real Islamic republic . . . against those who are distorting it and are represented by Mr Ahmadi-Nejad.”

Adding to the tension, footage on the Facebook networking site showed a young woman supporter of Mr Moussavi being shot in the chest during the Saturday protests. The graphic footage, which was widely viewed, showed the woman dying in front of her father who desperately tried to save her.

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.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, has won a second term in office after a bitterly fought election, Iran's interior ministry has said.Ahmadinejad took 62.63 per cent of the vote, crushing Mir Hossein Mousavi, his main rival, who got just 33.75 per cent, according to results released on Saturday.

The Guardian Council, a powerful body of clerics which oversees Iran's constitution, is still to release its count, but there seemed little doubt about the result after Ayatollah Ali Khameini, the supreme leader, congratulated Ahmadinejad.

Mousavi, who had himself declared victory just moments after the polls closed on Friday, described the decision to declare Ahmadinejad as the winner as "treason to the votes of the people".  "I personally strongly protest the many obvious violations and I'm warning I will not surrender to this dangerous charade," he said in a statement. "The result of such performance by some officials will jeopardise the pillars of the Islamic Republic and will establish tyranny."

"The result of the election comes from the ballot box, not from the street," he told tens of thousands of worshippers who had gathered in and around Tehran University for Friday prayers. "Today the Iranian nation needs calm." He said Iran's enemies were targeting the legitimacy of the Islamic establishment by disputing the outcome of the election.

A group of clerics and citizens left the holy city of Qom for a 150 km (100 mile) walk to Tehran in a show of support for Khamenei, state radio and television reported.

Iranian state media has reported seven or eight people killed in protests since the election results were published on June 13.

"If there is any bloodshed, leaders of the protests will be held directly responsible," Khamenei declared in his first address to the nation since the upheaval began. "The result of the election comes from the ballot box, not from the street," the white-bearded cleric told huge crowds thronging Tehran University and surrounding streets for Friday prayers. "Today the Iranian nation needs calm." He said any election complaints should be raised through legal channels. "I will not succumb to illegal innovation," he said, in an apparent reference to the street protests, which have few precedents in the Islamic Republic's 30-year history.

"It's a wrong impression that by using street protests as a pressure tool, they can compel officials to accept their illegal demands. This would be the start of a dictatorship," Khamenei said.

"American officials' remarks about human rights and limitations on people are not acceptable because they have no idea about human rights after what they have done in Afghanistan and Iraq and other parts of the world. We do not need advice on human rights from them," he said.

The office of the president is generally seen as more powerful today than when it was established three decades ago. In the early years of the Islamic Republic, presidential powers were limited, with the regime's constitutional framers taking care not to give the office excessive strength for fear of a possible coup.

The election of Ali Khamenei as Iran's third president in 1981 restored order to the executive, but Khamenei (now Iran's Supreme Leader) operated in the shadow of Ayatollah Khomeini and "remained a weak and uncontroversial president," Milani notes. During Khamenei's presidency, Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a top challenger for the June 2009 presidency whose supporters believe was the victim of vote rigging, was credited with displaying strong leadership, especially on economic matters.

After the elimination of the post of prime minister in 1989, executive duties were consolidated in the office of the presidency.

"What you're seeing is the result of 30 years of pressure and strangling," said Hossein Rahmati, a 68-year-old carpet seller wearing an old-fashioned 1980s suit to attend the march. "Iran is like a dam about to burst."

"My son was martyred in the Iran-Iraq war. I don't want to lose our Islam. We did not participate in 1979, in the revolution, to have this kind of freedom that Mousavi supporters claim they want."We don't want the freedom they want. Ahmadinejad is a courageous president. There was not any rigging in Friday's election. What's happening now is just [being influenced] by foreigners."

Tehran was a city literally divided yesterday as rival rallies for incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his defeated centrist challenger Mousavi took over either end of Vali Asr Avenue, the city's north-south spine.

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.

Shots have been fired at a rally in Iran where hundreds of thousands of people were demonstrating against last week's presidential election results.

Unconfirmed reports said one protester was killed and several more were hurt when security forces opened fire.

The BBC's Jon Leyne, in Tehran, says Monday's rally was the biggest demonstration in the Islamic republic's 30-year history and described it as a "political earthquake".

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.

We argue that engagement with Hamas is essential, and possible. To understand how, it is necessary to take into account that many of Hamas's statements and actions are governed and limited by its understanding of Islamic religious law (sharia), a comprehensive code relevant to all aspects of life for believing Muslims, very much including politics. We maintain that Hamas cannot be understood without understanding the sharia background of many of its policies.

Hamas maintains that accepting Israel's legitimacy necessarily renounces the Palestinian narrative, which defines Palestine as Arab and Muslim, in contrast to the Jewish narrative, which defines the Land of Israel as Jewish by God's promise, by legal right, and by history. Can these two worldviews be reconciled? Absolutely not. Can Hamas and Israel co­exist peacefully? We believe they can. Reconciliation is much harder than coexistence.

Hamas has repeatedly offered to end its violent resistance against Israel by means of various sharia-based mechanisms, such as a hudna (time-limited truce) or a tahadiyya (cease-fire). It has also advocated the principle of "Palestinian legitimacy," whereby it would accept as binding the decision of the Palestinian people to accept peace with Israel -- even if Hamas, as a Muslim religious organization, could not reconcile that outcome with sharia and preserve its Muslim beliefs.

Riot police on Tuesday fired tear gas to try to break up rock-throwing Han and Uighur protesters who clashed in the capital of China's Muslim region of Xinjiang two days after bloody clashes killed 156 and wounded more than 1,000. Hundreds of protesters from China's predominant Han ethnic group, many clutching meat cleavers, metal pipes and wooden clubs, smashed shops owned by Uighurs, a Turkic largely Islamic people who share linguistic and cultural bonds with Central Asia.

Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most politically sensitive regions in China and in both places the government has sought to maintain its grip by controlling religious and cultural life while promising economic growth and prosperity.

Xinjiang has long been a hotbed of ethnic tensions, fostered by a yawning economic gap between Uighurs and Han Chinese, government controls on religion and culture and an influx of Han Chinese migrants who now are the majority in most key cities. Beijing has poured cash into exploiting Xinjiang's rich oil and gas deposits and consolidating its hold on a strategically vital frontierland that borders Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, but Uighurs say migrant Han are the main beneficiaries.

Canada is reportedly to use the upcoming Group of Eight summit to push fellow industrialized nations to forge a unified position on Iran's nuclear program. Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper is to take the issue to the G8 summit in a bid to "come out with a coherent position to deal" with Tehran, Dimitri Soudas -- a spokesman for the premier -- said on Tuesday.

The spokesman went on to label the Islamic Republic as an "extremely dangerous" serious threat", which possesses "a nuclear proliferation program with a clear objective".

National Security Council head Uzi Arad says that Benjamin Netanyahu's government has inherited a "scorched earth" policy on the Iranian nuclear threat from the last administration, but he is certain that President Barack Obama is committed to Israel's security. In an exclusive interview in Friday's Haaretz Magazine, Arad says Israel displayed an "abominable" failure to address Tehran's nuclear development between 2003 and 2007, Arad says, and while he suggests a potential naval blockade on the Islamic Republic, he adds, "The more credible and concrete the option, the less likely that it will be needed."

Regarding the Palestinian arena, Arad says, "I also do not see a Palestinian leadership or a Palestinian regime, but a disorderly constellation of forces and factions."

As the topic of conversation returns to Iran, Arad says, "The defensive might we have must be improved and become tremendously powerful, and create a situation in which no one will dare to realize the ability to harm us. And if they do dare, we will exact a full price, so that they too will not survive."

The three nominees who were rejected were the proposed energy, welfare and education ministers. Of three nominated women ministers, only Health Minister Marzieh Vahid-Dastjerdi was approved. She will become the Islamic Republic's first female minister.

Crucially for Ahmadinejad, heavyweight nominees including the oil, defence, intelligence, interior, economy and foreign ministers were all approved by MPs. The nomination of Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi has been condemned by Argentina, which accuses him of involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish centre that killed 85 people. Tehran has repeatedly denied any link to the attack. He received the highest number of votes in favour of all nominees, 227 out of 286 members of parliament present.

For more than a year now, Warsaw public prosecutor Robert Majewski has been investigating former Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller's government on allegations of abuse of office. At issue is whether sovereignty over Polish territory was relinquished, and whether former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and his left-leaning Social Democratic government gave the CIA free reign over sections of the Stare Kiejkuty military base for the agency's extraterritorial torture interrogations.

"No European country is so sincerely and vigorously investigating former members of the government as is currently the case in Poland," says Wolfgang Kaleck from the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin, which supports the investigations.

The public prosecutor's office has also launched a probe to determine whether the Polish intelligence agency made 20 of its agents available to the CIA, as was recently reported by the conservative Polish daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita. A former CIA official confirmed this information to SPIEGEL. There was reportedly a document issued by the intelligence agency that mentioned both the 20 Polish agents and the transfer of the military base to the Americans. Two members of a parliamentary investigative committee in Warsaw had an opportunity to view this document in late 2005, but it has since disappeared.