Ahmadinejad gets key backing

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, formally endorsed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s second term as president on Monday, seven weeks after bitterly disputed elections prompted mass protests and deep divisions within the country’s elite.

The event, footage of which was broadcast by state-owned al-Alam television, was boycotted by the former presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, as well as the defeated candidates, Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mahdi Karroubi.

The somewhat awkward ceremony ended with Ahmadinejad giving the cleric a kiss on the shoulder. At the equivalent event four years ago, Ahmadinejad kissed Khamenei’s hand and was embraced by the cleric. But on Monday, when he approached Khamenei in an apparent attempt to repeat the gesture, Khamenei initially held out an arm to apparently keep him at more of a distance.

Khamenei nontheless used the ceremony to describe the election as a “golden page” in Iran’s political history, saying it was a “vote for the fight against arrogance and brave resistance to the international domination-seekers” — a reference to foreign criticism.

Ahmadinejad, who according to official results took 63% of the votes cast in the June 12 poll, will be sworn in by the country’s mainly conservative parliament on Wednesday, and will have a fortnight to submit his cabinet list to the legislature. The opposition says Ahmadinejad and his supporters stole the election from Moussavi by fraud. The official results said Moussavi had won 34% of the 40m votes cast.

Ahmadinejad’s re-election saw hundreds of thousands of Iranians take to the streets in protest. At least 30 people died and hundreds of demonstrators were imprisoned. Opposition groups say the number of dead is much higher.

More than 100 opposition members and activists accused of being involved in post-election violence appeared in court in Tehran at the weekend for the start of what opponents of the government claim is a mass show trial. Both Moussavi and Khatami, the reformist former president, have denounced the hearings.

The charges include rioting, attacking military and government buildings and conspiring against the ruling system. Many defendants had spent weeks in jail without access to lawyers, Moussavi said on Sunday.

The unrest, Iran’s worst since the 1979 Islamic revolution, continued late last week as police fired teargas and wielded batons to disperse anti-government protesters attending a graveside memorial for victims of the crackdown. Police stopped Moussavi and his supporters as they tried to reach the grave of Neda Soltan, the woman who became a symbol of the protest movement after her death was captured on video.