TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran’s supreme leader endorsed the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a ceremony boycotted by leading moderates in protest at a disputed poll that plunged Iran into its worst crisis since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Two former presidents, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, who backed defeated candidate Mirhossein Mousavi, did not attend Monday’s ceremony although they had been present at such events in the past, Iranian media reported.
“I am endorsing the presidency of this brave, hard-working and wise man as the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, in praise of Ahmadinejad who will be sworn in by parliament tomorrow.
Other leading moderate figures joined Rajsanfani, who has declared the country in crisis, and Khatami in missing the formal endorsement.
After the ceremony a witness said hundreds of Mousavi supporters, some of them honking car horns, gathered near a central Tehran square, where riot police and Basij militia were assembled to prevent any demonstration.
Ahmadinejad’s victory for a second term led reformists and moderate candidates Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi to accuse the government of electoral fraud, caused violent protests and exposed deep schisms within Iran‘s clerical and political elite.
The president now faces the difficult task of assembling a cabinet which is acceptable to the mostly conservative parliament, which may object if he just picks members of his inner circle. Parliament has in the past rejected some of Ahmadinejad’s cabinet choices. The Supreme Leader endorsed the June 12 election result and demanded an end to the protests at which more than 20 people have been killed, but in a challenge to his authority Mousavi and Karoubi said the next government would be illegitimate.
At the ceremony Khamenei criticized Ahmadinejad’s opponents, saying “some elites failed (the political test of) the election,” state television said.
The president told rivals on Friday that trying to split him from Khamenei was futile because they were like father and son.
Iranian officials have denied any fraud in the election, in which Ahmadinejad was declared to have won 63 percent of 40 million votes cast against 34 percent for Mousavi, in the face of persistent objections by moderates and reformers.
Senior members of Iran‘s influential Shi’ite clerical establishment have expressed misgivings in the aftermath of the poll in the world’s fifth biggest oil exporter which is locked in dispute with the West over its nuclear programme.
US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said the turmoil in Iran had affected its ability to respond to requests for talks with major powers who fear the nuclear work is a cover to build bombs. Tehran says the project is peaceful.
“ Iran has its hands full right now,” Crowley said. “…Two days before the inauguration of a president, it still has not yet convinced its people that this is a legitimate government.”
Without Khamenei’s support, Ahmadinejad’s choice of cabinet could run into trouble as a number of lawmakers have been critical of Ahmadinejad’s decisions since the vote.
His appointment as vice president of a man mistrusted by hardliners for remarks on Israel and for hosting an event they deemed un-Islamic prompted a veto from Khamenei last month.
Ahmadinejad veered close to defying the supreme leader by delaying a week before obeying his order and then naming the same man, Esfendiar Rahim-Mashaie, as his chief of staff.
He also sacked his hardline intelligence minister, who had criticized his actions, while his culture minister resigned.
The power struggle can only hamper the leadership’s ability to tackle the Islamic Republic’s economic problems, as well as the row over the nuclear program.
Another potential source of friction with the United States arose on Saturday when Iran arrested three American hikers who an Iraqi Kurdish official said had strayed across the border.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged the Iranian government yesterday to help determine the whereabouts of the missing Americans and “return them as quickly as possible.”
Adding to tense relations with the West, Tehran has accused Western powers of fuelling post-election unrest, particularly the United States and Britain which deny the charges.
“The enemies (the West) should not think that they can bring the Islamic republic to its knees by such small deeds,” Khamenei said at the official ceremony.
