Amidst a raging controversy surrounding the electoral results in Iran, the authorities appeared to have accepted that voting numbers in about 50 cities went beyond the actual number of voters, according to the reports of state television.
But the authorities have emphasized that the differences (that looked in the nature of affecting three million votes), did not flout Iranian law and the country’s dominant Guardian Council said it was not clear whether the election results would be altered in a decisive manner.
The results of the recently held elections that gave a prosperous victory to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had engulfed the capital in a wave of violence that was unseen over the past 30 years, with the government trying to connect the defiant loser to terrorists and detaining relatives of his powerful supporter, a founder of the Islamic republic.
Mir Hussein Moussavi, the moderate reform candidate who has criticized that the election results were maneuvered, hit back at his accusers on Sunday night in a posting on his Web site, requesting his supporters to resort to peaceful demonstrations in spite of strict warnings from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that no protests of the vote would be allowed. “Protesting to lies and fraud is your right,” Mr. Moussavi said in a challenge to Ayatollah Khamenei’s authority.
The authorized election results declared Mr. Ahmadinejad winner with 63 percent of the ballot — an 11-million vote advantage against to Mr. Moussavi’s 34 percent.
Various protests on a violent fashion have raged past Tehran following the elections, and Ayatollah Khamenei ordered the Guardian Council to conduct an inquiry into the opposition’s accusations of electoral fraud. The council itself has offered a random partial recount of 10 percent of the ballot.
The opposition has come up with a number of 646 electoral irregularities and is demanding that the vote be annulled.
But in a sermon at Friday prayers last week Ayatollah Khamenei ridiculed the idea that the huge margin attributed to Mr. Ahmadinejad could have been won through fraud.
On Sunday, the police took to custody five relatives of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who leads two influential councils and is an open supporter of Mr. Moussavi’s election. The relatives, including Mr. Rafsanjani’s daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, were released after several hours.
The moves against members of Mr. Rafsanjani’s family were looked upon as an effort to coerce him to drop his challenge to Ayatollah Khamenei — pressure that Mr. Rafsanjani’s son, Mehdi Rafsanjani, said he would reject.
Mr. Rafsanjani was seen criticizing Mr. Ahmadinejad during the presidential campaign, and his relations with Khamenei have also believed to have strained through the years.
