U.S. Prepares Targeted Sanctions Against Iran, Stand Off Continues

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As Standoff With Iran Continues, U.S. Prepares Targeted Sanctions



The Obama administration is readying sanctions against discrete elements of the Iranian government, including those involved in the deadly crackdown on Iranian protesters, marking a shift to a more aggressive U.S. posture toward the Islamic republic, U.S. officials said.

Ten months after President Obama set a year-end deadline for Iran to engage with world powers on its nuclear program, the government in Tehran has failed to respond in kind, other than an abortive gesture in the fall.

Now, in what may be a difficult balancing act, officials say the administration wants to carefully target sanctions to avoid alienating the Iranian public -- while keeping the door ajar to a resolution of the struggle over Iran's nuclear program. The aim of any sanctions is to force the Tehran government to the negotiating table, rather than to punish it for either its apparent push to develop a nuclear weapon or its treatment of its people.

"We have never been attracted to the idea of trying to get the whole world to cordon off their economy," said a senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "We have to be deft at this, because it matters how the Iranian people interpret their isolation -- whether they fault the regime or are fooled into thinking we are to blame."

As a result, top officials show little apparent interest in legislation racing through Congress that would punish companies that sell refined petroleum to Iran. "Sanctions would not be an alternative to engagement," another senior official said. "Our intention is to keep the door open."

Even before the unveiling of new sanctions, the administration has taken a dramatically harsher tone on Iran, in part because of the crackdown on anti-government demonstrators. After Iranian security forces shot at protesters in the streets over the weekend, Obama interrupted his Hawaiian vacation to strongly condemn the official reaction in Tehran.

Throughout the year, Obama had reached out directly to the Iranian leadership, through video messages and two personal letters to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in an effort to break through the antagonism and distrust that had built up since the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy. When the protests over a disputed presidential election began in June, Obama's initial response was muted to keep the prospects for engagement open.

A likely target

Sanctions would probably be imposed in three ways -- at the U.N. Security Council, with like-minded countries and unilaterally -- and U.S. officials would pursue them more or less simultaneously, with initial emphasis on pressing forward at the United Nations in February. France, an advocate of firmer pressure on Iran, will hold the rotating chairmanship of the Security Council that month.

During the George W. Bush administration, the Security Council thrice imposed relatively mild sanctions on Iran for its failure to heed calls to halt uranium enrichment. Those efforts also largely targeted elite parts of the government, but concern about not harming ordinary Iranians has been heightened by the rise of a nascent opposition movement, diplomats said.

The precise contours of the administration's sanctions policy are still being decided, but high on the list of targets is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the arm of the military that has been centrally involved in the attacks on demonstrators and that is playing an increasingly bigger role in Iran's economy. In 2007, the Bush administration cited the Revolutionary Guard and a group of front companies for their links to terrorism and proliferation -- including a major contractor known as Khatam al-Anbiya that channeled billions of dollars a year to the Guard from its activities in oil, construction, transportation and other industries.

The increasingly central role of the Revolutionary Guard in both the economy and the protests, officials said, makes it a target of possible resentment among the Iranian public -- and for tough U.S. sanctions. But officials insist that sanctions would not be linked to the protests. "It is only coincidental that at the same time we reached the deadline, the Iranian government has a bloody crackdown," said a third U.S. official. "It has only served to highlight the nature of the regime."

After Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, the highest-ranking Republican retained by Obama is Treasury Undersecretary Stuart A. Levey, who spearheaded Bush's targeting of the Guard and nine of its front companies. Now Levey and his team have identified additional front companies, all of which could be targets for action.

In the past year, as the president has publicly pursued engagement, Levey has quietly gathered ammunition for a financial assault on Iran. At one point, he assembled in his office representatives of countries that might join the United States in such actions, including European powers, Japan, Australia and the United Arab Emirates.

Levey has also won the imposition of fines on major international banks, such as $536 million on Credit Suisse this month, for helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions. American officials hope that his track record will make companies think twice about doing business with Iran. "When you put all of this together it creates a risk profile, so that not just banks but other parts of the private sector see that the trend is all going in the same direction," one official said. "That whole dynamic increases the possibility that we could successfully apply significant and effective pressure on Iran."

A complicating factor

Ironically, the protests may also have doomed efforts to begin negotiations on the nuclear issue. Iranian negotiators, meeting with diplomats from the United States and other powers in Geneva on Oct. 1, had tentatively agreed to a deal to swap much of its enriched uranium for fuel for a medical research reactor used to treat diseases. But then Iranian leaders split over the deal, especially after opposition leaders questioned it.

Iranian officials, even if they wanted to engage, have been hamstrung because of the protests, Iranian analysts said. "It is the internal crisis that really worries our leaders. They can't speak with one voice in the international community at this point," said Mashallah Shamsolvaezin during a phone interview conducted before he was arrested Tuesday in Tehran for unknown reasons. He said there will be no compromise with the West as long as Iran's internal political crisis continues.

Administration officials have not given up hope that the deal can be revived -- they are encouraging Turkish efforts to bridge the gap -- but they say the apparent turmoil it generated within the Iranian leadership is a useful side benefit of engagement. The effort to engage "has had an unsettling effect on people in the regime," one official said. "It has made it more difficult to demonize the United States and say it has been the root of all evil."

U.S. officials say engagement also has paid dividends in recruiting international support for sanctions. China appears to be the biggest roadblock to robust U.N. sanctions, despite a personal plea by Obama to Chinese President Hu Jintao to consider the effect on stability in the Persian Gulf -- from where China gets much of its oil -- if Israel tried to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities.

"The Chinese are going to be very complicated on this issue," one official said. "They have a direct stake in the stability of the Persian Gulf, and we have tried to underscore the risks of instability. So far, they understand the argument but don't have the sense of urgency that other countries have."



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Sources: Washington Post, MSNBC, Zimbio, Google Maps

Iranian Police vs Protesters, Again...Internet Blocked, Again

Witnesses: Iranian police clash with protesters


Security forces and pro-government militiamen with batons and tear gas were clashing with thousands of opposition protesters outside Tehran University on a day of planned student demonstrations, witnesses said Monday.

The witnesses said Basiji militiamen waded into the crowds of protesters, beating men and women on the heads and shoulders with batons, while security forces fired tear gas.

At least two women supporters of opposition leader Mr. Hossein Mousavi were arrested and authorities shut down the mobile phone network in central Tehran to stop opposition protesters from contacting each other, the reformist website Rah-e Sabz said.

Thousands of security forces surrounded universities ahead of protests that pro-reform students called for Monday. It was not immediately known if demonstrations broke out inside campuses because authorities have taken dramatic steps to seal them off, shutting down cell phones in the area and covering fences with banners and signs to hide anything going on inside.

"There are hundreds of riot police, (they are) everywhere around Tehran University and nearby streets," said another witness, who asked not to be named.

The large security operation suggested that authorities planned to make good on their promise to deal harshly with protesters marking the day in 1953 when three students were killed in an anti-U.S. protest. The occasion has in recent years been used by students to stage pro-reform demonstrations.

Journalists working for foreign media organizations were banned from covering Monday's planned protests. They were told late Saturday by the Culture Ministry that their press cards would be suspended for three days starting Monday.

Mousavi support

Government opponents were hoping for a large turnout for Monday's demonstrations to show their movement still has momentum despite a series of government crackdowns since the country's disputed presidential election in June.

Mousavi threw his support behind the planned student demonstrations and declared that his movement was is still alive. A statement posted on his Web site said the clerical establishment cannot silence students and was losing legitimacy in the Iranian people's minds.

"A great nation would not stay silent when some confiscate its vote," said Mousavi, who claims President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole the June 12 election victory from him by fraud.

Iran's universities have been strongholds of the opposition movement that grew out of the disputed June election, and authorities have besieged campuses nationwide with a wave of arrests and student expulsions.

The pro-government Basij militia has also recruited informers on campuses to blow the whistle on any opposition troublemakers, according to students.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters, accused the opposition Sunday of exposing divisions in the country and creating opportunities for Iran's enemies.

Rooftop chants

Despite heavy rain Sunday night, rooftop cries of "Allahu Akbar" or "God is Great" and "Death to the Dictator" were heard from many parts of Tehran on Sunday night. The protest reprised one of the main tactics of the anti-shah movement in the 1979 Islamic Revolution and was revived in the days and weeks after the disputed elections.

The rooftop chants had not been heard since the opposition's last attempt to mobilize, a Nov. 4 rally coinciding with state-sanctioned events to mark the anniversary of the 1979 U.S. Embassy takeover. That demonstration drew far fewer protesters than at the height of the summer's unrest. But it still provoked a violent response from security forces.

For weeks after the disputed June presidential election, demonstrations triggered by claims of massive fraud in the vote brought hundreds of thousands to the streets, but the relentless crackdown that followed has taken a heavy toll.

Seeking to deny the protesters a chance to reassert their voice, authorities slowed Internet connections to a crawl in the capital. For some periods on Sunday, Web access was completely shut down — a tactic that was also used before last month's demonstration.

The government has not publicly acknowledged it is behind the outages, but Iran's Internet service providers say the problem is not on their end and is not a technical glitch.

Confining Journalists

Seeking to confine journalists working for international media to their offices during the protests, Iran's Culture Ministry suspended accreditation allowing them to report from the streets from Monday to Wednesday.

The ministry also warned the few remaining pro-reform newspapers not to publish "divisive" material, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Largely swept off the streets, the opposition relies on the Web and cell phone service to organize rallies and get its message out.

The call for Monday's demonstrations was put out on dozens of Web sites run by supporters of opposition leaders Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, who both ran against Ahmadinejad in the June 12 election. Most of those sites have been repeatedly blocked by the government, forcing activists to set up new ones.


Sources: MSNBC

Iranian Gov't Making Examples Of Opponents, Arrestees

Washington Post----

TEHRAN -- The Iranian government stepped up pressure Tuesday on opponents challenging the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, setting up a special court to try detained protesters, carrying out new arrests and launching a campaign to publicly vilify those calling for a new vote.

Authorities also formally rejected the opposition's demands to annul the disputed June 12 presidential election on grounds of massive fraud and set a deadline of mid-August for Ahmadinejad's inauguration and the confirmation of his new cabinet.

But in an apparent effort to assuage the opposition, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, agreed to give a powerful supervisory body an additional five days to review the complaints of fraud.

President Obama's remarks Tuesday on the tumult seemed to strike a chord with at least some opposition supporters in Iran.

In an affluent North Tehran neighborhood, where people watched Obama's White House news conference on a big-screen satellite television, one woman commented: "He is following the right line. He should not give the regime an excuse to blame the U.S. for the protests."

Reporters "should grill him on human rights," a man said of Obama, while trying to work around censored Web sites on his computer.

On a day of relative calm after security forces broke up protests Monday, the government vowed to make an example of detained "rioters" and teach them a lesson. Hundreds of Iranians have been arrested in the past 10 days since the Interior Ministry declared that Ahmadinejad outpolled his nearest rival, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, by nearly 2 to 1. Mousavi has vowed to continue protesting despite a government ban on demonstrations and a public warning from Khamenei.

Truckloads of police in riot gear deployed at Tehran's main squares Tuesday to prevent a recurrence of the protests, and there were no signs of significant opposition gatherings.

A senior official of Iran's judiciary, which is controlled by the ruling Shiite Muslim clerics, said Tuesday that a special court would try detained protesters, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported.

"Those arrested in recent events will be dealt with in a way that will teach them a lesson," the official, Ibrahim Raisi, was quoted as saying. "The rioters should be dealt with in an exemplary way, and the judiciary will do that." Raisi did not elaborate.

State-run Iranian radio has reported that more than 450 people were detained in clashes with security forces around Tehran's Azadi Square on Saturday, when 10 people were killed and at least 100 wounded. In addition, according to international advocacy groups, dozens of Iranian journalists have been arrested.

Despite acknowledged irregularities, Iran's Guardian Council, which is responsible for confirming election results, ruled out a new vote, saying the problems were not serious enough to change the outcome.

"If a major breach occurs in an election, the Guardian Council may annul the votes that come out of a particular affected ballot box, polling station, district or city," council spokesman Abbas Ali Kadkhodai said, according to state-run news media. "Fortunately, in the recent presidential election we found no evidence of major fraud or breach in the election. Therefore, there is no possibility of an annulment taking place."

The council has agreed to a random recount of 10 percent of the ballots, but Mousavi and another opposition candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, have rejected the overture.

The council also asked Khamenei, who holds ultimate political and religious authority in Iran, to give it five more days to examine opposition complaints, extending a deadline that was to expire Wednesday. The council chairman, Ahmad Jannati, requested the extension "in order to remove any ambiguity" over the election results, state media said.

Khamenei approved the extension Tuesday.

There was no indication, however, that authorities were backing off their support for Ahmadinejad's reelection, which Khamenei effectively endorsed in a televised sermon during Friday prayers last week.

Moreover, a parliamentary board announced Tuesday that Ahmadinejad would be sworn in for his second term between July 26 and Aug. 19. Lawmakers will also review credentials of cabinet ministers during that period, IRNA reported.

And in an apparent effort to discredit the opposition, state television broadcast interviews with "rioters" who confessed to being influenced by Western news media.

A semiofficial news agency allied with Ahmadinejad also harshly denounced a group of Shiite religious figures close to former president Mohammad Khatami. The semiofficial Fars News Agency said members of the group, the Association of Combatant Clerics, were acting like "Zionists" and monarchists and "have now officially joined the anti-revolutionaries," a term used for enemies of Iran's political system.

In a letter, the group wrote that "the people of Iran, who with thousands of hopes, wishes and excitement came to voting boxes, are now gathering the bodies of their youth out of blood and soil, and are in mourning. Should these justice-seeking objections be answered with bullets that rip through the hearts of their children?"

In an indication of splits within the Majlis, or parliament, a group of 24 lawmakers summoned Interior Minister Sadegh Mahsouli to answer questions about what they described as the government's crackdown on reformists, including a nighttime raid early last week on student dormitories at Tehran University. The raid, in which student protesters were beaten and dorm rooms ransacked and burned, was carried out by pro-government militiamen, officials have acknowledged.

The lawmakers chastised Mahsouli for failing to identify and arrest the attackers and for "a lack of crisis management," the state-run Press TV reported.

Sources: Washington Post, MSNBC

Iranian Gov't Retaliates Against Journalists Who Helped Expose Its Cruel Dictatorship To The World

Washington Post----

In the first days after Iran's disputed election, journalists covered it openly.

Then, as government militias cracked down, they were told to stay in their offices. Now, many are being arrested -- so far, a Canadian Iranian reporter for Newsweek, a Greek reporter for the Washington Times and several dozen Iranian reporters, including a group arrested en masse at their office.

It is unclear why the journalists were arrested or what, if anything, they will be charged with. The detentions could, some experts say, be a scare tactic. Or, as with so much of what is happening in Iran now, they could be the beginning of a new phase in which old rules don't necessarily apply.

Maziar Bahari, 41, a documentary filmmaker who has covered Iran for Newsweek for nearly a decade, was arrested Sunday morning at his mother's house. The magazine has retained a lawyer for him, but no one has been able to ascertain where he is.

The Washington Times yesterday confirmed the arrest of Iason Athanasiadis, a journalist with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting who was covering the election. Friends said he disappeared last week as he prepared to leave Iran. The Iranian government announced his arrest yesterday, and the Greek government is pushing for his release.

Twenty-five employees of Kalemeye Sabz, the official newspaper of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, were arrested Monday for "illegal activities," and an additional dozen or two Iranian journalists have been detained, according to watchdog groups.

"Journalists have been getting rounded up, a few each day," said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, a spokesman for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, adding that they are hard to count because many people have gone into hiding

According to the CPJ, more than 40 journalists and media staff members have been arrested since the election. Dayem said he believes they are in Tehran's Evin Prison. Others have been detained and released.

About 15 reporters for U.S. news media are still in Iran, including some dual citizens. Most U.S. journalists who were covering the election have left, as their visas expired. The BBC's bureau chief, who lives in Iran, left in recent days at the request of the government. Because it is difficult for Western, and especially American, journalists to get visas to Iran, many who work there for foreign media organizations are dual citizens. Iran, however, treats them as Iranian citizens.

"Dual-citizen journalists often report on subjects the Iranian government considers the most sensitive and endure inconceivable degrees of scrutiny," said Azadeh Moaveni, an Iranian American who has reported from Iran for Time magazine in recent years. "Bahari's journalism these past years has always struck me as textbook objective, which suggests that during this crisis the rules may be changing."

The arrest of Bahari, who holds Iranian and Canadian citizenship, carries unpleasant echoes of the case of Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian Iranian journalist who was arrested in 2003 and died in custody. Since then, other dual nationals have been detained, most often on accusations of espionage, and usually released after several months. The most recent, Iranian American reporter Roxana Saberi, was released last month.

Such arrests tend to garner more publicity than do the arrests of Iranians who have no other citizenship, some of whom are detained for significantly longer.

In the past week, as news media restrictions tightened, ordinary citizens filled the void, posting videos, pictures and written accounts online. In recent days, Iranians say, government forces have targeted people with cameras.

The detention of a journalist presents a delicate situation for editors, who must decide whether to publicize it or try to resolve it quietly. Editors at Newsweek and the Washington Times yesterday stressed the balanced reporting their reporters have done in Iran.

"We don't know about anything he was doing that would have raised Iran's concerns," John Solomon, executive editor of the Washington Times, said of Athanasiadis.

A Tehran resident who said he is a good friend of Athanasiadis said the reporter used to live in Iran and had returned recently to report on the elections.

"We're worried about him, and I don't think he thought he would get arrested," said the friend, who gave only his first name, Farhad, adding that Athanasiadis was preparing to leave the country. "We talked on the phone and said goodbye. But I guess he stayed on."

Bahari's editor, Christopher Dickey, said Bahari, whose partner in England is five months pregnant, had been "treated with respect" during earlier questioning and during his arrest.

"The big risk for Maziar is that his case will be judged not on the basis of Maziar's reporting but on the basis of an idea about him, on the idea of the foreign press" as conspiring against the regime, Dickey said of Bahari, adding that if government authorities read his reporting on the recent protests, "they'd see very quickly how balanced it was."

"We hope this is a kind of 'roundup and release' scenario," he said, "a way of saying to those pushing the edge of the envelope, 'Step back, we're watching you.' "


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Sources: Washington Post, CTA.ca, Newsweek, MSNBC, Blue Star Chronicles, Google Maps

Pres. Obama To Denounce Iran's Violence Today...Special Court For Protesters

Huffington Post----

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

President Obama's press conference today: looking for questions from Iranians. One of the most rewarding parts of documenting the recent events in Iran has been making contact with the brave people there who are organizing and demonstrating at incredible risk.

Later today, President Obama is holding a news conference at the White House and I'll be attending. If I get called, I want to ask a question that comes directly from an Iranian. We've all spent plenty of time discussing and debating how the President has reacted to the crisis there; it seems only fair that the people on the ground, living right now under great stress and uncertainty, be able to have a question of theirs answered.

The popular Farsi-language social bookmarking site Balatarin has posted our request for questions here, and users there will be able to vote on them. If you're on Twitter, please retweet this post to help get the word out.



Iran Establishes Special Court For Protesters

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TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's rulers stiffened their stance against protesters Tuesday, firmly rejecting demands to annul the election over fraud allegations, and setting up a special court for detained demonstrators, and keeping troops in riot gear on the streets to break up any gatherings.

Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has been out of sight in recent days and there were no reports of violent clashes Tuesday, possibly a measure of the effectiveness of the crackdown.

However, protesters came up with new techniques, such as turning on the lights in their cars at certain hours of the day and honking their horns or holding up posters.

"People are calmly protesting, more symbolically than with their voices," a Tehran resident said in a telephone interview, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of government retribution.

In recent days, members of the elite Revolutionary Guard, the Basij militia and other security forces in riot gear have been heavily deployed across Tehran, preventing any gatherings and ordering people to keep moving.

Mousavi claims he was the true winner of the June 12 election, but the electoral commission declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won by a landslide.

Live bullets:

Another opposition figure, reformist presidential candidate Mahdi Karroubi, called for a day of mourning for the at least 17 people killed in protests since the election.

In a sign of a growing crackdown, Tehran riot police fired tear gas and live bullets Monday to break up about 200 protesters paying tribute to a young woman, Neda Agha Soltan, whose apparent shooting death was captured on video and circulated worldwide.

Caspian Makan, a 37-year-old photojournalist in Tehran who identified himself as Soltan's boyfriend, said she had not been deterred by the risk of joining protests.

"She only ever said that she wanted one thing, she wanted democracy and freedom for the people of Iran," he told an Associated Press reporter during a telephone call from Tehran.

NBC News reported that another rally in Soltan's memory was scheduled to be held in central Tehran on Tuesday.

Across the world, governments and diplomats were increasingly lining up on opposite sides in the Iranian showdown, the strongest challenge to the rule of Islamic clerics in 30 years.

Brutal repression:

In a boost for the embattled regime, Russia said Tuesday that it respects the declared election result. But France summoned Iran's ambassador to express concern about what it called "brutal repression" of protesters in Tehran.

The U.S. and many European countries have refrained from challenging the election outcome directly, but have issued increasingly stern warnings against continuing violence meted out to demonstrators. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has demanded an immediate end to "arrests, threats and use of force."

However, the Iranian regime appeared determined to crush the post-election protesters, rather than compromise.

Mousavi has charged massive vote fraud and insisted he is the true winner. However, Iran's top electoral body, Guardian Council, found "no major fraud or breach in the election," a spokesman, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, was quoted by Press TV as saying Tuesday. "Therefore, there is no possibility of an annulment taking place."

The 12-member council has the authority to annul or validate the election. On Monday, it acknowledged in a rare step 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 widespread enough to affect the outcome.

Iran has 46.2 million eligible voters, one-third of them under 30. The final tally was 62.6 percent of the vote for Ahmadinejad and 33.75 percent for Mousavi, a landslide victory in a race that was perceived to be much closer. The huge margin went against the expectation that the record 85 percent turnout would boost Mousavi.

In another sign of the regime's crackdown, Ebrahim Raisi, a top judicial official, confirmed Tuesday that a special court has been set up to deal with detained protesters.

"Elements of riots must be dealt with to set an example. The judiciary will do that," he was quoted as saying by the state-run radio, which gave no further details. The judiciary is controlled by Iran's ruling clerics.

Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, won crucial backing from Russia on Tuesday, with the foreign ministry in Moscow saying it respects the declared election result. In a statement on its Web site, the ministry said that disputes about the vote "should be settled in strict compliance with Iran's Constitution and law" and are "exclusively an internal matter."

Russia, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, has longtime political and economic ties with Iran where it is helping build a nuclear power plan at Bushehr. In his only trip abroad since the vote, Ahmadinejad traveled to Russia last week for a conference where he was seen prominently shaking hands with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Many Western democracies, including the U.S., have criticized Iran's campaign to crush dissent.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called on Iran to recount the votes, but stopped short of alleging electoral fraud. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been outspoken in his criticism of Iran's response to the demonstrations, but said doors must remain open to continue talks on the country's nuclear program.

Two prominent Iranian opposition figures took their case to Europe on Tuesday.

Iranian Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi asked EU officials in Brussels not to negotiate or hold meetings with Iranian leaders until the crackdown stops.

In Rome, Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf held a news conference, saying he had been asked by Mousavi's aides to spread the word on what is happening in Iran. Makhmalbaf said that even if Ahmadinejad manages to govern for the next four years, "he will not have one day of quietness." He said protesters would resort to general strikes and what he called civil resistance.

Iranian leaders have accused the West of meddling in its affairs. Press TV said Tuesday that despite such complaints, the government refused to grant a permit for a protest by university students outside the British embassy in Tehran.

Opposition protests have become smaller, after a huge opposition rally a week ago, though demonstrators have been more willing to confront Iranian troops.

Severe restrictions on reporters have made it almost impossible to independently verify reports on demonstrations, clashes and casualties. Iran has ordered reporters for international news agencies to stay in their offices, barring them from reporting on the streets.

A number of journalists have been detained since the protests began, though there have been conflicting accounts. The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders put the figure of reporters detained at 34.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said 13 were still in custody, including Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari.

The Iranian government must release all journalists and halt "unreasonable and arbitrary measures that are restricting the flow of information," the committee said. "Detaining journalists for reporting news and commentary indicates the government has something to hide."

Sources: Huffington Post, MSNBC, Whitehouse.gov, Flickr