To supplement reporting by New York Times journalists inside Iran on Tuesday, The Lede will continue to track the aftermath of Iran’s disputed presidential election, as we have since election day, June 12. Please refresh this page throughout the day to get the latest updates at the top of your screen (updates are stamped with the time in New York). For an overview of the current situation, read the main news article on our Web site, which will be updated throughout the day.

Readers inside Iran or in touch with people there are encouraged to send us photographs or use the comment box below to tell us what you are seeing or hearing.

Roger Cohen, a former foreign editor of The New York Times who is now an Op-Ed columnist, has filed another column from Tehran on Tuesday, “ The End of the Beginning.”

Since a new opposition rally has apparently been scheduled for the square outside Iran’s Parliament at 4 p.m. on Wednesday (which is 7:30 a.m. in New York) we should have some sign of whether there is still momentum in the protest movement in Iran in about 13 hours. The Lede will return early on Wednesday morning to report on the rally and the day’s other events. Please consult the home page of NYTimes.com for any developments overnight. Thanks for all your comments and links.

A reader points out that the White House made President Obama’s opening statement on Iran at his news conference today available in Farsi translation on WhiteHouse.gov.

A blogger who seems to be writing Twitter updates from inside Iran reports that Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, may be trying to get permission for Mir Hussein Moussavi to speak on the Iranian state television channel IRIB:

Larijani pressing for Mousavi to be given airtime on IRIB to discuss elections

The same blogger reports that the Iranian newspaper Kayhan, “has tonight called for the arrest of Mousavi.” According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, Kayhan is “close to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.”

Last week Roger Cohen noted in an Op-Ed column from Tehran: “Kayhan, the conservative pro-Ahmadinejad newspaper, had a headline on its Web site within an hour of the vote’s close celebrating the incumbent’s victory with 65 percent of the vote.”

The Iranian blogger we quoted above writes that Mr. Moussavi “has stated ‘If I am arrested or killed – strike until the Gov falls.'”

Five minutes ago the first message posted today on the Twitter feed Mousavi1388 appeared and it is a call for opposition supporters to attend a rally on Wednesday:

Please come to Baharestan Sq. in Tehran tomorrow at 4pm

That location, outside Iran’s Parliament, or Majlis, seems to echo what ABC’s Lara Setrakian reported earlier — that there was talk in Tehran of a peaceful protest with Mr. Moussavi and former president Khatami at that time and place on Wednesday.

Earlier on Tuesday, Press TV reported that the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Ali Larijani, has “recommended fresh television debates, asserting that ‘the voice of the people who have taken to the streets in millions should be heard.'”



View Larger Map

Russia Today, the Russian government’s English-language satellite news channel, aired this video report on Tuesday looking into the Iranian government’s claims that the whole opposition movement in Iran is a plot fostered by Western governments and George Soros. Perhaps because it is financed by the Kremlin, which quickly congratulated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on being named the winner of the Iran’s presidential election, Russia Today’s way of investigating this conspiracy theory was to talk to just two guests, from the far-right and far-left of the American press, who both endorsed the idea that it is all a plot.

Craig Roberts, a former member of the Reagan administration, said that the C.I.A. was behind the whole thing. Wayne Madsen, an investigative journalist, agreed with the Russia Today anchor that Mir Hussein Moussavi’s green movement had “all the hallmarks” of an American-orchestrated “color revolution.” Mr. Madsen added that, given the heavy coverage of what is happening in Iran by American news organizations, “it seems like there is a coordinated and concerted effort to try to stir things up using the Western media.”

As a reader writes to point out, if Russia Today had asked, Mr. Roberts might have explained that he also sees a conspiracy behind what he has called “the 9/11 cover-up.”

In an interview with the British newspaper The Independent in Paris, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the Iranian filmmaker who is serving as an unofficial spokesman for the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi, said that Mr. Moussavi is under constant surveillance by Iran’s secret police and is not free to speak to his supporters. The Independent reports:

Mr. Makhmalbaf, 52, an informal spokesman abroad for the protest in Iran, said that Mr. Mousavi was not under arrest but “he has security agents, secret police with him all the time. He has to be careful what he says.” In a telephone interview, Mr. Makhmalbaf, the director of the 2001 film Kandahar, denied suggestions that the protests against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were losing steam. “The regime, arguably, is losing ground, not the protests,” he said. “Ordinary Iranians are openly rejecting the legitimacy and power of Ayatollah Khamanei. That is entirely new, unheard of.” […] The film director dismissed all hope of some form of negotiated agreement. “Within the last ten days, there has been a meeting between Mousavi and Ayatollah Khamanei,” he said. “Nothing came of this meeting. I do not know of any further dialogue which is now going on.” Asked to explain how a Mousavi-run Iran would differ from an Ahmadinejad-run Iran, Mr. Makhmalbaf said: “The first thing to say is that it is now clear that Ahmadinejad is irrelevant. He is not the real power.” If Mousavi was to become president, he said, Iran would invest in “improving the economy for ordinary people, not creating nuclear weapons or supporting conflicts abroad”. Secondly, he said, there would be an end to the “constant harassment of young people which means that virtually every young person in Iran has been beaten up by the security forces.”

Lara Setrakian of ABC News in Dubai reports on her Twitter feed that there is “talk in Tehran that” opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi and the former president Mohammed Khatami may “speak on Wed 4 pm at parliament, with their families, in ‘most peaceful protest.'”

On Tuesday, BBC Radio aired this telephone interview with a resident of Tehran, who said that he could hear the protest in Haft-e-Tir Square on Monday from his home nearby. He added that on Monday night the shouts of “Allahu Akbar!” — used by opposition protesters to signal discontent with the regime — “were even louder.”

The BBC has published e-mail messages from readers in Shiraz and Isfahan, who describe heavy security in those cities. A reader named Mehrdust wrote that in Shiraz:

Police are almost everywhere in the streets, especially in the places where chaos broke out on Saturday — Mollasadra Street and Eram Street. Every 50m or so you can see a group of between five to 10 guards, sitting on the pavement. There’s been no sign of demonstrations in Shiraz since Saturday. Either people are waiting for something, or maybe they are just too scared. I joined the protests on Saturday. The police were being really violent, hitting people with batons and using tear gas. There are no clear figures, but I believe at last 10 people were killed in Shiraz that night.

A reader named Hossein wrote from Isfahan:

I haven’t been out today yet, but yesterday there were policemen standing by every petrol station and bank. It seems the city is back the way it was — there weren’t any protests today or yesterday that I know of. I think people are waiting for the final announcement of the Guardian Council and the reaction from Mr [Mir Hossein] Mousavi and Mr [Mehdi] Karoubi. At nights you can still hear the sound of people shouting “Allah-o-Akbar” [“God is great”]. I don’t join in because I think it’s a symbol of Islam and I think the Islamic hardliners are the source of all this misery we are going through. Most of the websites, including the BBC ones are still blocked. You can only access them through anti-filters. I’m using the Chinese software Freegate, which is working really well. Of the TV channels, only CNN is still getting through.

BBC News also received this short video clip of what a reader said was a recent protest in Isfahan.

On their blog following events in Iran, the National Iranian American Council has the translated text of a statement released on Monday in Iran by a moderate clerical body, the Association of Combatant Clergy, which was denied permission to stage a protest rally last Saturday in Tehran:

Millions of informed and decent people who believe that their votes have been tampered with, and that their intellect has been insulted, and for the defence of their rights and dignity have in a spontaneous manner come into the streets to express their pain and sense of oppression. You (the regime) insult them, and have stolen thousands of them from the streets and from their homes and taken them to unknown places. You have attacked the students and to these people who call out God is Great or Ya Hossein – you attack them like Moghuls. You dare to blame these attacks on the people themselves. We strongly support Mr. Mousavi – especially against the accusations that all the unrest and damage is due to his actions. This damage is the responsibility of those who turned our city into a barracks. They should be identified, arrested and charged. Senior clergy across the country have told us that they have been put under severe pressure (by the state) to stand up against the millions of people. Until now, they have resisted. We thank them. For the return of people’s trust and confidence we ask for the formation of a committee of neutral people, experts, and those familiar with the law who can investigate and address the complaints made by the candidates in the elections. May they issue a fair judgment… and help return our country to harmony.

One note of caution on these reports of clerical support for the opposition in Iran. Many of the blogs we are looking at are edited by people who are more activists than neutral observers. There is no doubt that the National Iranian American Council — which has called for a new election in Iran, like the editors of EurasiaNet, have doubts about the integrity of the official results of the election.

It is also the case that all of the Iranian bloggers we have been following are also opposition supporters and, to some extent, writing or relaying video or photographs expressly to bring about a political objective — a fair count of the votes cast on June 12.

That doesn’t mean that there may not be serious rifts developing in the clerical power structure in Iran. But it is a reminder that, in the same way that partisans on both sides of the long struggle over Florida’s electoral votes in 2000 tended to seize on bits of news that encouraged them and send that information around as widely as possible — that is, in fact, how Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo blog came into existence — some of what we hear now, of what may be happening behind the scenes in Qum, might be influenced by what the people passing this information on want to believe is happening.

Early this morning a reader drew our attention to a report published on Monday on the Web site EurasiaNet, which is one of the civil society projects financed by George Soros that Iran’s intelligence service accuses of trying to overthrow the Iranian government. While it is based on anonymous sources, and written from afar, EurasiaNet’s report suggests — under the headline “Rafsanjani Poised to Outflank Supreme Leader Khamenei” — that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, might actually be losing a power struggle with the former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who supported and bankrolled the campaign of the opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi:

Looking past their fiery rhetoric and apparent determination to cling to power using all available means, Iran’s hardliners are not a confident bunch. While hardliners still believe they possess enough force to stifle popular protests, they are worried that they are losing a behind-the-scenes battle within Iran’s religious establishment. A source familiar with the thinking of decision-makers in state agencies that have strong ties to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said there is a sense among hardliners that a shoe is about to drop. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani — Iran’s savviest political operator and an arch-enemy of Ayatollah Khamenei’s — has kept out of the public spotlight since the rigged June 12 presidential election triggered the political crisis. The widespread belief is that Rafsanjani has been in the holy city of Qom, working to assemble a religious and political coalition to topple the supreme leader and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “There is great apprehension among people in the supreme leader’s [camp] about what Rafsanjani may pull,” said a source in Tehran who is familiar with hardliner thinking. “They [the supreme leader and his supporters] are much more concerned about Rafsanjani than the mass movement on the streets.” […] Now that Ayatollah Khamenei has become inexorably connected to Ahmadinejad’s power grab, many clerics are coming around to the idea that the current system needs to be changed. Among those who are now believed to be arrayed against Ayatollah Khamenei is Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top Shi’a cleric in neighboring Iraq. Rafsanjani is known to have met with Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani’s representative in Iran, Javad Shahrestani. A reformist website, Rooyeh, reported that Rafsanjani already had the support of nearly a majority of the Assembly of Experts, a body that constitutionally has the power to remove Ayatollah Khamenei. The report also indicated that Rafsanjani’s lobbying efforts were continuing to bring more clerics over to his side. Rafsanjani’s aim, the website added, is the establishment of a leadership council, comprising of three or more top religious leaders, to replace the institution of supreme leader. Shortly after it posted the report on Rafsanjani’s efforts to establish a new collective leadership, government officials pulled the plug on Rooyeh.

We have no idea what EurasiaNet’s sources are, so it is hard to evaluate the reliability of this reporting, but the article is a reminder that for all the attention paid to Tehran, and the arguments about whether the protesters on the streets there represent a majority or minority of Iran’s voters, it remains a fact that it is the votes of just a few clerics in the holy city of Qum that really matter. In Iran’s complex system of government, the people choose a president, but the country is ruled by a supreme leader chosen by a few dozen clerics. If enough of those clerics were to side with Mr. Rafsanjani against Mr. Khamenei, the Islamic Republic could still see only its second ever change of leadership at the very top.

During his news conference today in Washington, President Obama took a question from Nico Pitney of Huffington Post, which Mr. Pitney explained had come from an Iranian who responded to an online solicitation. Here is video of the exchange:

On his Guardian America blog, Michael Tomasky asks: “When the president can answer an Iranian’s question conveyed by the Huffington Post, who needs journalists?”

As my colleagues Michael Slackman and Sharon Otterman report, President Barack Obama addressed the crisis in Iran during a news conference in Washington on Tuesday:

President Obama condemned Iran’s aggressive response to the mass protests that have swept the country after its contested elections, saying that the United States and the international community “have been appalled and outraged” by the intimidation, beating and detention of peaceful demonstrators. “I’ve made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty” of Iran, he said. “But we must also bear witness to the courage and the dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society. And we deplore the violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place.” He also said that comments by Iranian officials blaming the United States, Britain and other Western nations for inciting the protests were “patently false” and a “tired strategy to use old tensions to scapegoat other countries” that will not work. “Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history,” he said.

Reuters reports that Iranian state television has suggested that Neda Agha-Soltan’s killing was staged:

Iranian TV, quoting unnamed source, said Neda was not shot by a bullet used by Iranian security forces. It said filming of the scene, and its swift broadcast to foreign media, suggested the incident was planned.

On Monday night we noted that an Iranian student writing for The Daily Beast said that his parents, who watch only state-controlled television, refused to believe that this young woman could have been killed by the Iranian government.

Reuters adds:

Iranian state television, in a broadcasts clearly intended to discredit opponents defying a ban on protests, paraded people it said had been arrested during weekend violence. “I think we were provoked by networks like the BBC and the VOA (Voice of America) to take such immoral actions,” one young man said. His face was shown but his name not given.

The Guardian has published translations of some of the interviews Iranian state television aired on Tuesday with people the government says are protesters who have confessed to violence, mayhem and brain-washing by the BBC’s Farsi-language satellite channel:

Presenter: The few rioters who disturbed Tehran’s order in the past few days, have made significant statements regarding their objectives. Woman (with pixelated face): There was a military hand grenade [as received] in my hand bag and in my son’s bag. It was all because my son wanted to have power and show that he could take over power [and use it] against his own country and his fellow countrymen. This was all because of an atmosphere created by the BBC in Iran. I was influenced by this channel. Reporter (asks a young man): When did you come to Tehran? Young man: About seven or eight days ago. Reporter: When were you arrested? Young man: Three days ago. Reporter: Where? Young man: Under Hafez flyover. Reporter: Did you have any criminal record at all? Young man: No, not at all. Reporter: What about drugs? Young man: Yes. I had half a gram of crystal with me once. I came to Tehran to repair my mobile phone but when I saw that there was disorder, I started robbing people. I used the opportunity provided by the crowds and rioters and started robbing people.

There’s quite a bit more on The Guardian’s Web site, including another man who said that Voice of America broadcasts were perhaps responsible for his mindless violence under the guise of protest:

I was not pursuing anything particular. I think I was influenced by some networks like the BBC and the VOA to do this unethical action.

An Iranian-American blogger in the United States has uploaded two short video clips that he says were shot on Monday in Tehran. The images in this video are said to have been shot during the thwarted protest rally in Haft-e-Tir Square.

This second video appears to show police officers beating an opposition supporter they have detained in an unspecified part of Iran’s capital:

Robert Tait reports on The Guardian’s Web site that several of the Iranian soccer players who wore green wristbands during the national team’s recent match in South Korea have been punished:

Their gesture attracted worldwide comment and drew the attention of football fans to Iran’s political turmoil. Now the country’s authorities have taken revenge by imposing life bans on players who sported green wristbands in a recent World Cup match in protest against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election. According to the pro-government newspaper Iran, four players – Ali Karimi, 31, Mehdi Mahdavikia, 32, Hosein Ka’abi, 24 and Vahid Hashemian, 32 – have been “retired” from the sport after their gesture in last Wednesday’s match against South Korea in Seoul. They were among six players who took to the field wearing wristbands in the colour of the defeated opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, which has been adopted by demonstrators who believe the 12 June election was stolen. Most of the players obeyed instructions to remove the armwear at half-time, but Mahdavikia wore his green captain’s armband for the entire match. The four are also said to have been banned from giving media interviews.

The Guardian points to this video uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday, which appears to show members of the security forces on motorcycles breaking up a small, loud gathering of opposition protesters:

It is not clear if this video was shot on Tuesday, or earlier, but the contrast between this somewhat furtive protest and the video was saw last week of massive rallies on Tehran’s streets — like this footage — is striking.

A reader writes to draw our attention to an online effort by some volunteers to help the opposition protesters in Iran by translating documents related to their movement into English. An explanation of the project on the group’s Web site says:

The Translation and Interpretation Initiative for Iranian Protesters (TIIIP) is an ad hoc initiative to produce free, publication-ready translations and high-quality interpretations of the written and spoken communication streaming out of Iran in the Farsi (Persian) language in the form of e-mails, YouTube videos, Facebook entries, press releases, etc. We leverage volunteer translators, interpreters, linguists, bilinguals, and technical and administrative support personnel to achieve these goals. Our approach is similar to crowdsourcing, but with greater emphasis on the use of professional translators, writers, and editors. Our platform is the wiki. We make liberal use of social media such as Twitter and Facebook to communicate and to attract attention to our initiative.

A reader of The Times named Jean writes:

Presently, efforts are underway to translate an underground protest newsletter and recent statements from the Combatant Clerics Association and Mehdi Karroubi.

The project has set up both a Wiki and a blog to facilitate its work.

In another sign of how much pressure the authorities are now putting on the opposition protesters, one of the bloggers who appears to be writing from Iran posted these updates on Twitter in the past few minutes:

We are having difficulty getting updates to u as so many of our contacts been arrested – life here is v/v/dangerous now also one of us is badly injured and we cannot take to hospital – treating with trusted doctor contacts but needs hosp –

Just over a week ago, this same blogger was pointing to video and photographs showing hundreds of thousands of Iranians in the streets, protesting the election.

The Iranian-American Web site Tehran Bureau has posted two accounts from opposition protesters who say they tried to attend the memorial service on Monday in Tehran’s Haft-e-Tir Square. One of the protesters observed that the police breaking up the demonstration seemed to shy away from confrontations with women. This protester suggested that the police may have been influenced by the memory of Neda Agha-Soltan’s very public death on Saturday. According to this observer, female protesters took advantage of this to protect male protesters on Monday:

whenever they got hold of a man, women would surround them and shout don’t beat him, don’t beat and they would turn and anxiously say we didn’t beat him. It was astonishing.

The other first-hand account describes how the authorities prevented the crowd from gathering and pointed out that the protesters seemed to need a leader to rally around:

there were a lot of people in the square, but no one allowed to gather, so people were just walking up and down the meydoon (square). there was a HEAVY military presence — all kinds, basij, riot police, khahki (camouflage) uniformed ones — all on motorbikes, or in pick up trucks or standing — they ALL had those batons and weren’t allowing people to stand still (ie. gather). we walked around and tried to have a look from those walkways that cover the meydoon/square but the police were also on them so wouldn’t let u stand still for a second. people were also gathering in the koocheh’s (alleyways) off the side of the square too see what was going to happen and if we could gather in one place. there was not just young people, but all kinds of age groups and people from all walks of life. then the police would start coming to an alley where a lot of people were and shout at them to move along/disperse. they would then get aggro and start chasing people down the alleyways, hitting with batons. people would run but then gather in another alleyway… very resilient. we moved through the various alleyways too until shouted at to leave. these police are v v intimidating. like animals really as u just dont know if they are gonna wack you (which they would). i wanted to take photos of the milit presence, but it was way too scary. honestly people who manage to record or take photos are incredibly shoja (brave). then we saw that they had blockaded one alleyway (koocheh mina) and people were getting trapped and beaten up with the batons. there were people on roofs/windows looking so i hope they managed to record some stuff. we moved around the meydoon and streets. after hearing/seeing that they were blockading people in alleys. we decided it was safer to stay in the main square and move around. over the few hours it was getting busier with protesters, but i think they needed someone like mousavi or another figure so as to gather around him. it was v v difficult to gather.

This account seems to match closely with the actions of the security forces in this video we posted on Monday, what was apparently shot from above a street near the square where the rally was to have taken place.

In the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday, Borzou Daragahi reported from Tehran that Neda Agha-Soltan’s friend and music teacher, Hamid Panahi, who was with her when she was shot and killed on Saturday, said that he was not afraid to speak out about her death:

“They know me,” he said. “They know where I am. They can come and get me whenever they want. My time has gone. We have to think about the young people.” Neda, he said, was smart and loving. She had a mischievous streak, gently teasing her friends and causing them to laugh. She was passionate about life and meant no one any harm. In the election unrest, friends found in her an unexpected daring, a willingness to take risks for her beliefs. “She couldn’t stand the injustice of it all,” Panahi said. “All she wanted was the proper vote of the people to be counted. “For pursuing her goals, she didn’t use rocks or clubs,” he said. “She wanted to show with her presence that ‘I’m here. I also voted. And my vote wasn’t counted.’ It was a very peaceful act of protest, without any violence.”

On Monday, BBC Persian TV’s Rana Rahimpour produced this English-language video report, made from video of demonstrations in Iran that was sent to the BBC by people who said that they showed clashes between the security forces and protesters on Saturday. Be warned that some of the images of wounded protesters are graphic and disturbing. Some of this video seems to show that, in at least one location in Tehran on Saturday, the protesters did hold their own for a time in the clashes.

An Iranian blogger points to this video, which was uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday and broadcast BBC Persian TV. The video appears to show members of Iran’s security forces smashing a car and spray-painting on a wall during the crackdown on opposition protests.

An article by Farnaz Fassihi in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday reminds us that while Neda Agha-Soltan’s last moments were recorded on video and seen around the world, there are other families mourning the other Iranians who have been killed during the post-election protests. Here is how Ms. Fassihi’s report from Tehran begins:

The family, clad in black, stood at the curb of the road sobbing. A middle-aged mother slapped her cheeks, letting out piercing wails. The father, a frail man who worked as a doorman at a clinic in central Tehran, wept quietly with his head bowed. Minutes before, an ambulance had arrived from Tehran’s morgue carrying the body of their only son, 19-year-old Kaveh Alipour. On Saturday, amid the most violent clashes between security forces and protesters, Mr. Alipour was shot in the head as he stood at an intersection in downtown Tehran. He was returning from acting class and a week shy of becoming a groom, his family said. […] Upon learning of his son’s death, the elder Mr. Alipour was told the family had to pay an equivalent of $3,000 as a “bullet fee”—a fee for the bullet used by security forces—before taking the body back, relatives said. Mr. Alipour told officials that his entire possessions wouldn’t amount to $3,000, arguing they should waive the fee because he is a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war. According to relatives, morgue officials finally agreed, but demanded that the family do no funeral or burial in Tehran.

The Wall Street Journal also produced this flow chart which, like one the BBC has been using, tries to explain the complex power structure that informs Iran’s system of government.

On The Guardian’s Web site Robert Tait writes that an attack on the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Ali Larijani, by a newspaper close to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suggests that “the splits at the top of the Islamic regime seem to be reaching new levels.” Mr. Tait writes:

Vatan-e Emrouz, a newspaper owned by Mehrdad Bazrpash – a renowned hardliner and close aide to Ahmadinejad – has today attacked Larijani, the conservative speaker who is nominally on the side of the status quo and against the protesters. The newspaper risks alienating Larijani – a powerful figure close to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – by criticising his comments on state television. Larijani accused the guardian council of pro-Ahmadinejad bias and said that most Iranians are suspicions of this month’s election result.

Iran’s Press TV reports that the country’s Interior Minister, Sadeq Mahsouli, has been “summoned” to the country’s Parliament to answer questions about his reaction to the post-election protests. Press TV adds that the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Ali Larijani, has reportedly called for state television to allow “the voice of the people who have taken to the streets in millions” to be heard:

Some 24 lawmakers asked Mahsouli to expound on a number of controversial issues, including the recent night raids on university dormitories and private residences by unknown groups, which have sparked a storm of protests in recent days, Tabnak reported. Mahsouli took the rap for failing to identify and arrest the perpetrators of the attacks and leaving the issues in a haze of ambiguity. He was also scolded for what the lawmakers believed to be “a lack of crisis management during the nine consecutive days of nationwide turmoil”. The lawmakers demanded that Mahsouli give an adequate explanation regarding the sudden crackdown on Reformists, which has so far placed a large number of political figures behind bars. The session comes shortly after Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani expressed his deepest concern over the Interior Ministry’s course of action towards the post-vote developments. Larijani, in a rare internal criticism, held the Interior Ministry responsible for the recent attacks against civilians and university students. “The Interior Ministry should clarify why the security forces destroyed the building and why students were injured or even killed,” said Larijani. The Majlis speaker also recommended fresh television debates, asserting that “the voice of the people who have taken to the streets in millions should be heard.”

According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, the newspaper cited by Press TV, Tabnak, is “affiliated with presidential candidate Mohsen Rezai,” the conservative former Revolutionary Guard leader who has also disputed the results of the June 12 election.

The BBC has posted this video, said to show protests on a street in Tehran on Monday night.

Reuters reports from Iran: “Trucks and police in riot gear were deployed on the main squares of Tehran on Tuesday, but there were no signs of any protest gatherings in the city by midday.”

Mehdi Karroubi, one of the two reformist presidential candidates who continues to contest the results of the election, has reiterated his call for Iranians to commemorate those killed by the security forces during protests later this week. Reuters reports that an aide to Mr. Karroubi said on Tuesday: “Karroubi calls on Iranians around the country to hold ceremonies on Thursday to remember those [killed] at protests.”

Mr. Karroubi posted a statement calling for the memorials on his party’s Web site on Monday. These translated excerpts from the Farsi language original were posted by an Iranian blogger on Twitter:

It is regrettable that the highest authority in Iran chooses to ignore the peaceful demands of the people The Gov has chosen to respond with oppression and violence The actions of this Gov insults all free peoples of the world Para 27 of Constitution allows unarmed public gatherings without permit if they do not insult Islam the right of the nation to challenge this unfair & corrupt election is the right of all Muslims In Iran the minority are ruling the majority with violence and oppression I invite the nation to participate on Thurs in remembrance of those killed by this Gov I demand release of all political prisoners immediately I demand gov provide medical treatment for those injured I demand that the bodies of the martyrs be released to the families for burial immediately I demand an immediate end to censorship by gov

As my colleague Michael Slackman reports on Tuesday, a spokesman for the Guardian Council, the clerical body that oversees the Iran’s elections, said that there is no need to overturn the results of disputed June 12 presidential election. According to a report from Press TV, Iran’s English-language satellite news broadcaster:

Iran’s Guardian Council rules out the possibility of nullifying the country’s June 12 Presidential election, saying there has been no record of any major irregularity. Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, the council’s Spokesman said late on Monday that most of the complaints reported irregularities before the election, and not during or after the vote.

*An earlier version of this post suggested that the National Iranian American Council, which has called for a new election in Iran, would like to see Mir Hussein Moussavi replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s president. A representative of the council objected to this characterization and stated that the organization is non-partisan, so we have revised the entry.