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US President Obama denied Western meddling in Iranian affairs yesterday 23 June, and UN Secretary general Ban Ki-moon called on Iran to respect the will of the people. The UK expelled two Iranian diplomats after Iran expelled two British ones.  Several Western news organizations are noting that they are severely restricted in their ability to report the news from Iran.

People are taking to the rooftops at night to shout Alahu Akbar (God is great) in defiance, as the daily protests in Teheran and other Iranian cities die down after unprecedented police repression. The street protests have included clerics as well as many women who have been beaten and, in one celebrated case, shot.

Iran’s Guardian Council, the country’s supreme arbiter of the elections, refused to consider new elections, saying that the irregularities reported were insignificant and would not change the outcome of the disputed 12 June election, although Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khameini, later allowed five extra days to examine charges of fraud. One of the losing candidates, Mehdi Karroubi, strongly criticized the state-run media, and called for a day of mourning Thursday 25 June. A leading critic of the regime, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri has also called for three days of national mourning for those killed in the protests. BBC, CNN, Reuters