Tehran, June 25: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Barack Obama on Thursday of behaving like his predecessor towards Iran and said there was not much point in talking to Washington unless the U.S. president apologised.
Obama said on Tuesday he was “appalled and outraged” by a post-election crackdown and Washington withdrew invitations to Iranian diplomats to attend U.S. Independence Day celebrations on July 4 — stalling efforts to improve ties with Tehran.
“Mr Obama made a mistake to say those things … our question is why he fell into this trap and said things that previously (former U.S. President George W.) Bush used to say,” the semi-official Fars News Agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
“Do you want to speak with this tone? If that is your stance then what is left to talk about… I hope you avoid interfering in Iran’s affairs and express your regret in a way that the Iranian nation is informed of it,” he said.
About 20 people have died in demonstrations following the disputed June 12 election. Police and militia have flooded Tehran’s streets since Saturday, quelling the most widespread anti-government protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The unrest has exposed unprecedented rifts within Iran’s clerical establishment, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who normally stays above the political fray, siding strongly with Ahmadinejad.
“My personal judgment is that this is a country deeply split and emotionalised,” a Western diplomat in the region said. The protests had shown how dissatisfied some parts of society were with the way Iran was run — to the chagrin of its leadership.
“I think they are deeply shocked,” the diplomat said.
BEHIND-THE-SCENES STRUGGLE
Khamenei has upheld the result and Iran’s top legislative body, the Guardian Council, has refused to annul the elections. State Press TV quoted a spokesman for the council as saying they were “among the healthiest elections ever held in the country”.
The wife of opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi, who says he won the poll, said it was a “duty to continue legal protests to preserve Iranian rights”.
Mousavi supporters said they would release thousands of balloons on Friday imprinted with the message “Neda you will always remain in our hearts” — a reference to the young woman killed last week who has become an icon of the protests.
But analysts say the battle has now moved off the street into a protracted behind-the-scenes struggle between powerful establishment figures, including former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Ahmadinejad and Khamenei.
Obama had previously been muted in his criticism.
But on Tuesday he said that, “the United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings, and imprisonments of the last few days.”
Before the election, Obama had tried to improve ties with Iran — branded by Bush as part of an “axis of evil”.
Washington had been hoping to convince Tehran to drop what it suspects are plans to develop nuclear bombs, while also seeking its help in stabilising Afghanistan.
It had invited Iranian diplomats to attend Independence Day celebrations for the first time since Washington cut diplomatic ties with Tehran in 1980. The move to withdraw the invites was largely symbolic as no Iranians had even responded.
Mohammad Marandi, who is the head of North American Studies at Tehran University, said mistrust of the United States and Britain was rife, partly due to the “very negative” role of U.S.- and British-funded Persian-language television stations.
“They are working 24 hours a day spreading rumours and trying to turn people against each other,” he told Reuters.
“In the short term relations will definitely get worse, but in the long term the U.S. really has to re-think its policy and to recognise that regime change is not possible in Iran.”
—Agencies