Iran Arrests Hundreds in Clashes

Agence France Presse

Iran arrested hundreds of people after deadly clashes on the tense streets of Tehran, state radio said on Monday, but the opposition defiantly vowed to press on with its post-election protests.

As the nation's Islamic rulers struggle to contain the biggest upheaval since the 1979 revolution, the election watchdog the Guardians Council acknowledged discrepancies in the June 12 presidential vote but insisted they would not change the overall results.

Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has led a wave of massive protests over what he says was a rigged election that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power, urged supporters to continue demonstrating but to adopt "self-restraint" to avoid more bloodshed.

State radio said at least 457 people had been detained in clashes around Tehran's Azadi square on Saturday which left 10 people dead and at least 100 more wounded.

In a sign of cracks appearing within Iran's elite, five members of influential cleric and former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's family, including his high-profile daughter, were detained by the authorities.

Faezeh Hashemi, a key Mousavi supporter, and four others were arrested on Saturday but released late Sunday, press reports said.

A total of 17 people have been killed and many more wounded since the violence erupted in the post-election turmoil, according to state media, while many hundreds of protesters as well as prominent reformists, journalists and analysts have been rounded up.

The streets of Tehran were tense on Monday but have remained largely quiet since Sunday and there were no reports of any planned demonstrations. Witnesses said they did not see many security personnel out on the streets.

The 12-member Guardians Council acknowledged vote discrepancies, saying its preliminary investigation revealed that the number of ballots cast in 50 of the total 366 electoral districts exceeded the number of eligible voters.

But spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodai said there were "no irregularities" and insisted any recount "will not change the election outcome much."

Mousavi and his two fellow defeated presidential challengers have complained that there were more votes than voters in up to 170 districts, and have listed a total of 646 irregularities.

"The revolution is your legacy. To protest against lies and fraud is your right. Be hopeful that you will get your right and do not allow others who want to provoke your anger ... to prevail," Mousavi said on his newspaper website Kalemeh.

But the post-revolution premier urged his supporters -- who have adopted his green campaign color -- to refrain from violence and show self-restraint, adding: "The nation belongs to you."

Footage broadcast on the Internet has shown scenes of brutal violence on the streets of Tehran, with one video viewed by hundreds of thousands around the globe purportedly showing a bloodstained young woman named Neda reportedly killed when hit by a bullet.

World leaders have voiced mounting alarm over the unrest, which has jolted the pillars of the Islamic regime and raised concerns over the future of the Shiite Muslim powerhouse, the fourth largest oil producer in the world.

Iranian leaders have lashed out at "meddling" by Western nations, and accused the foreign media -- already facing tight restrictions on their work -- and the exiled opposition of fomenting the unrest.

British think tank Chatham House said the results showed "irregularities" in the turnout and "highly implausible" swings to Ahmadinejad, according to an analysis published on Sunday.

There would have to have been a radical shift in rural voting patterns and a "highly unlikely" change of heart among former reformist voters for Ahmadinejad to win as he did, the study concluded.

Ahmadinejad, who had put Iran on a collision course with the West during his first four-year term with his anti-Israeli tirades and defiant stance on the country's nuclear drive, was declared the victor with 63 percent of the vote.

On Sunday, he bluntly told the United States and Britain to stop interfering while Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki accused London of plotting for the past two years to sabotage the election.

But in a sign of the divisions emerging among senior Iranian figures over the vote, parliament speaker Ali Larijani said: "A large portion of the people perceived the election result to be different to the one officially announced. This perception must be respected."

Mousavi on Saturday fired off an unprecedented criticism of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has ruled out any election fraud and warned protesters to halt their demonstrations.

Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, backed President Barack Obama's cautious response to the turmoil, saying: "It is very crucial, as I see it, that we not have our fingerprints on this."

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband rejected the charges that protesters were being "manipulated or motivated" by foreign nations and denounced what he said were Iran's effort to turn the election dispute into a "battle" with the outside world.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner condemned what he called "this brutal repression" while President Nicolas Sarkozy told Qatar's QNA news agency that the attitude of the Iranian authorities was "inexcusable."

In the latest crackdown on the media, Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari of Newsweek has been detained without charge and not been heard of since, the magazine said, while the BBC's permanent correspondent in Tehran has been ordered to leave

See more stories tagged with: Maziar Bahari , ayatollah ali khamenei , Chatham House , Abbasali Kadkhodai , Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani , Faezeh Hashemi , mahmoud ahmadinejad , mir hoseein mousavi , iranian election , iran