Iranian Election Fallout

Hardliners chanted "death to America" while opposition supporters countered with "death to Russia", referring to the Iranian government's ties to Moscow.

There was no linking of the protests with any of Mousavi’s demands to work within the system or within a new political party - his name has seemed to separate from his corpus for the protesters. However, this was the most raucous 18th of Tir [9th of July] since the original one, so the regime may have been surprised its scare tactics did not completely work.

In one of the videos above it has been translated that people are chanting “Death to Mojtaba” Khamanei’s son, but the actual translation is more colorful. For the non-Farsi speakers they are actually chanting “MOJTABA, WE HOPE YOU DIE BEFORE YOU GET THE SUPREME LEADERSHIP” responding to reports that Khamanei is grooming his son to become the next supreme leader after he dies.

Hundreds of Republican Guards and Basij at Enqelab, Valiasar and Vanak. At Vanak soldiers every 5 feet around the roundabout. Lots of Basij motorcycle gangs (15-25 in each) swerving around the cars.

"It wasn't about elections anymore," says Mr. Moradani, a short, skinny man with pitch-black hair and a beard. "I was defending my country and our revolution and Islam. Everything was at risk."

Mr. Moradani remembers field trips to war monuments, Shiite shrines and so-called martyrs' cemeteries, where those who died in the Iran-Iraq war are buried. He received his first military training before he turned 14, learning how to handle a gun and fight from trenches, he says. When he was 14, the Basij forces piled Mr. Moradani and 100 other youths into buses and took them around the dormitories of Tehran University. At the time -- 10 years ago this week -- students had been orchestrating large, antigovernment protests. The demonstrations were among the most significant since the 1979 founding of the Islamic Republic. Basij commanders ordered the teenagers to beat up student organizers, Mr. Moradani says. They did. In 2003, when student uprisings erupted again, he rushed to help quash them.

He says he hopes one day to follow in his father's footsteps and join the Revolutionary Guard. He has taken the Guard's rigorous entrance exam twice, passing the ideology and the written portions both times. But he failed the final hurdle: an intense interview that lasts six to eight hours. Applicants must discuss why they are loyal to the regime and the Supreme Leader. He intends to try again.

After four years in office, Ahmadinejad has filled the Interior Ministry with cronies, many of whom have connections to the Revolutionary Guards. A source who participated in closed Interior Ministry planning sessions, speaking on condition of anonymity to EurasiaNet, says top ministry personnel openly stated during one session that a repeat of the 1997 election, in which the reformist candidate, Mohammad Khatami, scored an upset victory, would not be tolerated on June 12.

By the numbers, it would seem that the country’s vast election apparatus has the ability to guarantee a favorable outcome for Ahmadinejad. According to Kamran Daneshjoo, the Interior Ministry official responsible for overseeing the voting, there are 385,000 citizens who will be administering voting precincts. The Guardian Council is expected to deploy another 340,000 people to monitor the balloting. In addition, there will be hundreds of thousands of security personnel deployed on election day. Overall, the country has about 57 million citizens of voting age, meaning that roughly 1 in 60 Iranians of voting age will be involved in some aspect of conducting the election.

For one, they note that over 59 million ballots have been printed, far more than the number of registered voters

working hard to establish a public profile apart from hardliners led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and from progressives led by aggrieved presidential challenger Mir Hussein Mousavi.

The Larijani coalition is also gaining the backing of so-called traditionalists among the Islamic clergy. So far, the new faction has not enunciated a philosophical platform,

Ali Larijani is emerging as the public face of the faction, but behind him stand his very influential brothers and other relatives, according to a well-connected source. One of Larijani’s brothers is Sadegh, who is one of the 12 members of the powerful Guardian Council. Another is Mohammad Javad, a physicist and prominent political strategist. The Larijanis’ cousin, Ahmad Tavakoli, a prominent rightist politician and a member of parliament, is also believed to be an important player in the faction, as is Ali Motahari, another prominent rightist political operator who is Ali Larijani’s son-in-law.

Hossein Rassam,

Yadollah Javani, the head of political department of the elite Revolutionary Guards,

The opposition website Rooz Online carried what it said was an interview with a man the government had shipped in to Tehran to quell the demonstrations. He said he was being paid 2m rial (£122) to assault protesters with a heavy wooden stave, and that other volunteers, most of them from far-flung provinces, were being kept in hostel accommodation, reportedly in east Tehran.

hundreds of activists, journalists and intellectuals

Four pro-reform newspapers have been closed down,

With the exception of Yazdi, the arrests appeared to bypass political leaders and focus on their lieutenants.

On Monday, June 15, in what may have appeared as a slight softening of his initial enthusiastic response to the official results of the presidential election, Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, called for a “careful” evaluation of complaints submitted by reformist challenger Mir Hussein Mousavi to the Guardian Council.  Subsequently, on Tuesday, the Speaker of the Council, after meeting with representatives of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s opponents, announced the Council’s readiness to conduct a recount of votes from any and all disputed voting districts.

“I have written a letter to the Guardian Council and described the various irregularities,” he announced, “even though I have no hope in the Council. Many of its [twelve] members did not preserve their neutrality during the election process and openly supported the incumbent candidate.” Mousavi’s proposed solution is not a recount, but a cancellation of the results and a new election altogether

For his part, Mohtashamipour proposed the formation of what he labeled a Truth-finding Committee to investigate electoral irregularities and allegations. The Committee, he insisted, would consist of three representatives of Grand Ayatollahs (maraje’ taqlid), four persons representing the candidates, one employee of the Interior Ministry who has proven his neutrality during the election, one member of the Guardian Council with similar conditions accompanied by a university law professor and an unbiased judge as recommended by the Bar Association, the Attorney General, the Head of the Judicial Branch, and the Head of Iran’s General Inspection Organization. As none of the Grand Ayatollahs have supported Ahmadinejad in the election, the arrangement would severely limit the authority of both the Council and the Interior Ministry.

6.15pm: Iranian filmmakers Marjane Satrapi and Mohsen Makhmalbaf just held a press conference in Brussels to say they have a document proving election fraud, Adnkronos news agency reports.The document, seen here, says that Mousavi won the election with 19m votes, with cleric Mehdi Karroubi coming in second and Ahmadinejad coming in third. Satrapi and Makhmalbaf said the document had come from the Iranian electoral commission, and is dated June 13, the day after the election.

Saeed reports that Mousavi's wife Zahra Rahnavard today joined injured students at Tehran University, and condemened violence by the government and riot police.

A friend of the Guardian in Tehran writes that her Gmail account has been filtered, and that her internet service provider said it has been ordered to cut all emails, messaging software and many websites, especially foreign news outlets.

Iran's Guardians Council, the country's top legislative body, has announced it is ready to partially recount disputed votes cast in the June 12 presidential electio

Council spokesman Abbas Ali Kadkhodai is quoted by Iran's state news agency as saying that "it is possible that there may be some changes in the tally after the recount."

After the announcement, Reuters quoted a senior ally of reformist candidates Mir Hossein Musavi and Mehdi Karrubi as saying they wanted new elections held rather than a recount of "a few ballot boxes." Both candidates suffered decisive defeats, according to initial results.

‘Hereby we inform all foreign media representatives to avoid any news coverage which has not been coordinated or authorised by this bureau,’ a culture ministry official said.

‘If the Guardians Council reaches the conclusion that such offences as buying votes or using fake identity cards have been committed... it will order a recount,’ council spokesman Abbas Ali Kadkhodai told the official news agency IRNA.

The Iranian website Balatarin posted an email said to be from an internet inspector in charge of six polling stations. It alleged that software had been rigged to register ineligible votes, including ones cast by children, dead people or by the same individual several times.