Iran regime resolute: No new election

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

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Iranian government officials have repeatedly suggested that a revote is extremely unlikely. But Tuesday's announcement by Iran's top electoral body, the Guardian Council, was the clearest yet in ruling out a new election.

The announcement on Iran's state-run English language Press TV is another sign the regime is determined to crush the post-election protests rather than compromise.

The 12-member council has the authority to annul or validate the election. On Monday, it said in a rare acknowledgement that it found voting irregularities in 50 of 170 districts, including vote counts that exceeded the number of eligible voters. Still, it said the discrepancies, involving some 3 million votes, were not enough to affect the outcome.

The streets of Tehran remained tense the day after hundreds of riot police armed with steel clubs and firing tear gas, backed up by the Basij Islamic militia, broke up an opposition rally of about 1,000 people. Demonstrators had gathered in defiance of the Revolutionary Guards, the elite force set up in the wake of the 1979 revolution, which warned of a "decisive and revolutionary" response to protests.

The opposition has been staging almost daily rallies to protest alleged fraud and widespread irregularities in the June 12 election, which returned hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power for another four years.

World leaders are calling for an immediate halt to state violence against the protesters, but the Iranian authorities have fired back, accusing Western governments, particularly Britain and the United States, of meddling.

The state media said at least 17 people have been killed and many more wounded in the unrest that has convulsed the nation for 11 days, shaking the very pillars of the Islamic republic. In the latest crackdown on the media, Iran has arrested a journalist of Greek origin working for The Washington Times, reported Agence France-Presse, citing the Fars news agency. Iran has already expelled the BBC's Tehran correspondent, ordered the closure of Al-Arabiya’s television office and Newsweek said a Canadian journalist working for the magazine was detained without charge.

Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad won crucial backing from Russia on Tuesday, with the Foreign Ministry in Moscow saying it respects the declared election result, according to a report by The Associated Press. Many Western democracies, including the United States, have criticized the way in which the Iranian government has dealt with the widespread protests, and renewed Iranian government threats of a crackdown have heightened concerns. In New York, U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-moon urged an "immediate stop to the arrests, threats and use of force."