West behind Iran unrest - Ahmadinejad

IRAN: The West must be held to account for stoking Iran’s post-election unrest, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday, as the third mass trial got underway of demonstrators accused of trying to overthrow clerical rule.

The June 12 vote has plunged Iran into its biggest internal crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution, exposing deepening divisions within its ruling elite and also further straining relations with Western governments.

Iran accuses the United States, and Britain in particular, of inciting post-election protests in an attempt to topple the clerical establishment. They deny the charge. Ahmadinejad, sworn in on Aug 5 for a second four-year term, said the West should be held accountable.

“This time you clearly interfered in Iran’s domestic affairs and you thought you would be able to harm the Islamic nation,” the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying on Sunday.

“You should be held accountable for your actions but we know very well the fuss you created in the world is not a sign of your authority but rather it is a sign of your weakness and downfall,” Ahmadinejad said.

Tehran and the West are already at odds over Tehran’s nuclear work, which Washington fears is aimed at making bombs but which Iran, the world’s fifth biggest oil-producer, says is for peaceful electricity generation. At Sunday’s trial, no prominent moderate politicians were among the 28 accused named by Fars news agency.

Iranian media showed pictures of some of them sitting in a courtroom wearing light-coloured prison clothes.

Iran earlier this month held two trials for more than 100 moderates, including senior politicians, for various charges including acting against national security which is punishable by death under Iran’s Islamic law.

French teaching assistant Clotilde Reiss and two Iranians working for the British and French embassies in Tehran were among those tried on Aug. 8. The West and human rights groups have condemned the trials.

Tehran, Monday, Reuters