Defiance continues in Iran

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

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Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi issued a direct challenge to the country's supreme leader and cleric-led system, calling for a mass rally to protest disputed election results and violence against his followers.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had said the night before that Mousavi should pursue his demands through the country's electoral system and Iranians must unite behind their Islamic government.

Mousavi appears to have no intention of backing down. Supporters of Mousavi were set to stage a new rally in Tehran despite a ban on such gatherings, as Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review went to press Wednesday afternoon. Mousavi’s call on his Web site for a demonstration Thursday came shortly after the country's most powerful military force said that Iranian Web sites and bloggers must remove any material that "creates tension" or face legal action.

"We are after a peaceful rally to protest the unhealthy trend of the elections and realize our goal of annulling the election results," The Associated Press quoted Mousavi as saying. He called for "a new presidential election that will not repeat the shameful fraud from the previous election."

Mousavi and his supporters accuse the government of rigging June 12 poll to declare hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the overwhelming winner. Their street protests paired with dissent from powerful clerical and political figures have presented one of the gravest threats to Iran's complex blend of democracy and religious authority since the system emerged from the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The Web became more essential after the government barred foreign media Tuesday from leaving their offices to report on demonstrations on the streets of Tehran. Grappling with the biggest wave of public anger in three decades of Islamic rule, Iran has lashed out at enemy "plots," hauling in foreign ambassadors and rounding up scores of reformists.

World governments voiced increasing alarm about the situation in Iran, but U.S. President Barack Obama, while raising "deep concerns" over the election, said Washington would not meddle in the affairs of its arch foe.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in the strongest remarks so far by a Western leader, said there was election "fraud," while other European nations have also expressed concern about the vote and the ensuing crackdown, according to a report by Agence France-Presse. Hundreds of protesters have also taken to the streets of European cities and in Iran's neighbors in the Gulf in support of Mousavi, who was premier of Iran in the post-revolution era during its war with Iraq in the 1980s.

Iran has responded to international criticism by summoning EU envoys and lashing out at foreign meddling by its "enemies," accusing the U.S., UK and Israel in particular of trying to fuel chaos. At least seven people have been killed and many more wounded in clashes.