Police again broke up protests in Tehran June 22, as the Revolutionary Guards warned they would crush "rioters" opposing the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "In the current sensitive situation...the Guards will firmly confront in a revolutionary way rioters and those who violate the law," said a statement on the Guards' website. Thestatement comes a day after pposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi called for continued protests. Ali Shahrokhi, head of parliament's judiciary committee, said Mousavi should be prosecuted for "illegal protests and issuing provocative statements." (Reuters, June 22)

More evidence both of electoral fraud and an internecine struggle among Iran's ruling clerics emerged this weekend, as security forces clashed with protesters in the streets of Tehran. On June 21, the government said it had arrested the daughter and other relatives of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani. They were apparently later released, but their arrests appeared to be a clear warning from the hard-line establishment to a cleric who may be aligning himself with the opposition. AP reports that the night of the 21st, Tehran's streets fell mostly quiet for the first time since the disputed June 12 election—but defiant cries of "God is great!" echoed again from rooftops after dark.

Conspiranoids and freedom-haters of the left and right alike are rushing to betray the Iranian protest movement. On the supposed "left," the retro-Stalinist Workers World and its International Action Center as well as (disappointingly) Monthly Review and the World Socialist Website have weighed in for Ahmadinejad and dissed the protesters as dupes or pawns of US imperialism. How interesting to see these supposed "leftists" making common cause with right-wing cheerleaders for authoritarian regimes...

Defying official threats and an intimidating police and paramilitary presence, protesters again took to the streets of Tehran June 20—although security forces this time prevented them from gathering in large numbers by massively occupying all public plazas and thoroughfares. Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi appeared at a demonstration in south of the city and called for a general strike if he were to be arrested. "I am ready for martyrdom," he told supporters.

Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in his Friday prayers address on the crisis in the country, blamed a world media controlled by "dirty Zionists" and "most evil" British for fomenting divisions, and called upon all Iranians to accept the election results, saying that a gap of 11 million votes is infallible. But his words also revealed a clear fault line within Iran's political elite. In his lengthy discourse on former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, Khamenei made insubstantial charges of corruption, and implicated the entire Rafsanjani family as "problematic."

In a scene recalling the 1979 Revolution, tens of thousands of black-clad mourners made their way silently through the streets of Tehran June 18, commemorating the lives of those slain in six straight days of protests since the announcement of President Ahmedinajad's election victory. At Imam Khomeini square, the huge plaza named for the founder of the revolution, where they were joined by defeated opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, the crowd broke into chants of "Death to the dictator!" and "Where are our votes?" Mousavi, addressing the crowd, repeated his call for new elections. (London Times, June 18)

International rights organizations say hundreds of activists and opposition figures have been detained in Iran in response to protests over the country's disputed elections. Hadi Ghaemi, director of the New York-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, said he had spoken with family members and colleagues of people who have been arrested or disappeared—saying there have been at least 200 such cases across the country.

Venezuela's Hugo Chávez is one of the few world leaders to stand by Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even as hundreds of thousands take to the streets of Iran's cities to protest his re-election claim. A Venezuelan foreign ministry statement, "in the name of the people," hailed the "extraordinary democratic development" that resulted in Ahmadinejad's victory.