Violence continues in Iran

Jerusalem Post:

Protesters set fires and smashed store windows Sunday in a second day of violence as groups challenging President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election tried to keep pressure on authorities that have responded with anti-riot squads and blackouts of Web networks used to rally the pro-reform campaign.

Ahmadinejad dismissed the unrest - the worst in the decade in Teheran - as "not important" and insisted the results showing his landslide victory on Friday were fair and legitimate. A huge rally in his support was organized even as clashes flared around the capital.

The violence spilling from the disputed results has pushed Iran's Islamic establishment to respond with sweeping measures that include deploying anti-riot squads around the capital and cutting mobile phone messaging and Internet sites used by the campaign of Ahmadinejad's election rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi.

There's little chance that the youth-driven movement could immediately threaten the pillars of power in Iran - the ruling clerics and the vast network of military and intelligence forces at their command - but it raises the possibility that a sustained and growing backlash could complicate Iran's policies at a pivotal time.

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In a second day of clashes, scores of young people shouted "Death to the dictator!" and broke the windows of city buses on several streets in central Teheran. They have burned banks, trash bins and piles of tires used as flaming barricades to block police.

Riot police beat some of the protesters with batons while dozens of others holding shields and motorcycles stood guard nearby. Shops, government offices and businesses closed early as tension mounted.

Along Teheran's Vali Asr St. - where pro-Mousavi activists held a huge pre-election rally last week - tens of thousands of people marched in support of Ahmadinejad, waving Iranian flags and shouting his name.

In a news conference, Ahmadinejad called the level of violence "not important from my point of view" and likened it to the intensity after a soccer match.

"Some believed they would win, and then they got angry," he said. "It has no legal credibility. It is like the passions after a football match. ... The margin between my votes and the others is too much and no one can question it."

About a mile away from Ahmadinejad's news conference, young Iranians set trash bins, banks and tires on fire as riot police beat them back with batons.

"In Iran, the election was a real and free one," said Ahmadinejad. "The election will improve the nation's power and its future," he told a packed room of Iranian and foreign media.

Ahmadinejad also accused foreign media of launching a "psychological war" against the country.

Iranian authorities have asked some foreign journalists - in Iran to cover the elections - to prepare to leave. Nabil Khatib, executive news editor for Dubai-based news network Al Arabiya, said the station's correspondent in Teheran was given a verbal order Sunday from Iranian authorities that the office will be closed for one week.

No reason was given for the order, but the station was warned several times Saturday that they need to be careful in reporting "chaos" accurately.

Iran restored cell phone service that had been down in the capital since Saturday. But Iranians could not send text messages from their phones, and the government increased its Internet filtering in an apparent attempt to undercut liberal voices. Social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter were also not working.

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There is much more.

Ahmadinejad has certainly not been humbled by the election. He seems even more defiant and acts as if he has a mandate. Those in the State Department who think he will be more reasonable now, appear even more delusional. He is a messianic religious bigot now as he was before the election.