THE TELEGRAPH: Deep divisions have emerged within the Iranian leadership in the run-up to Saturday's first anniversary of the hotly disputed presidential election contest that returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.
Factional infighting fuelled by a series of splits since the vote was exposed as rigged last year have come to a head with a row over an attack on attack [sic] on the family of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran's Islamic revolution.
The dispute has further eroded support for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader, who has been criticised for driving Iran into economic and diplomatic isolation by backing the extremist president.
The emergence of prominent hardliners as critics has intensified pressure on a government already facing a revolt by reformists.
Official results that granted an overwhelming victory to Mr Ahmadinejad last June are still hotly disputed by millions of Iranians.
Mass protests in the wake of the vote pitched the country in its worst turnmoil since the Islamic revolution in 1979.
A harsh clampdown has seen an estimated 5,000 Iranians jailed and hundreds killed as the regime moved [to] crush[ed] the popular challenge to its authority.The protest movement has been virtually forced underground as its leaders were forced to cancel protests that had been planned across Iran today. Only sporadic defiance was reported on the eve of the anniversary yesterday.
Pictures of those killed in last year's clashes were hung from trees in central Tehran while an estimated 700 political prisoners at Gohardasht prison staged a hunger strike.
There were also unconfirmed reports of clashes between protesters loyal to the opposition, which calls itself the Green Movement and security officials on Tehran's metro system. >>> Con Coughlin and Ahmad Vahdat | Saturday, June 12, 2010
