Articles about Iran: Ayatollah Khamenei's speech, and "US has limited inroads to understanding Iran"
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This image made available Thursday , June 18 2009 from the Iranian Supreme Leader's website shows Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 2nd left, speaking at a meeting in Tehran with representatives of presidential candidates Wednesday June 17, 2009 .
(AP Photo/Iranian Supreme Leader's website, HO)
This image made from video broadcast by Iran's Press TV, in Tehran, Thursday, June 18, 2009, shows opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi as he addresses supporters at a demonstration in Tehran . Tens of thousands of black-clad protesters filled the streets of Tehran again Thursday, joining opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi to mourn demonstrators killed in clashes over Iran's disputed election.
(AP Photo/Press TV via APTN)
Protesters march during a silent demonstration against the results of the Iranian presidential election in central Tehran June 18, 2009.
REUTERS/Demotix
Play Video ABC News – Patience Wearing Thin in Iran 
TEHRAN, Iran – Iran's supreme leader said Friday that there was "definitive victory" and no rigging in disputed presidential elections, offering no concession to protesters demanding the vote be canceled and held again.
In his first public address since demonstrators flooded the streets, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said protests should cease and the opposition must pursue its complaints within the confines of the cleric-led ruling system.
He said protesters would be "held responsible for chaos if they didn't end" days of massive demonstrations. The unrest has posed the greatest challenge to the system since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought it to power.
Khamenei said official results showing a landslide for hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were beyond question.
"There is 11 million votes difference, Khamenei said. "How one can rig 11 million votes?"
He blamed Great Britain and Iran's external enemies for trying to foment unrest but said Iran would not see a second revolution like those that transformed the countries of the former Soviet Union.
He remained staunch in his defense of Ahmadinejad, saying his views were closer to the president's than to those of Hashemi Rafsanjani, a powerful patron of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.
He reiterated that he had ordered the country's highest electoral authority to pursue election complaints.
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Second article:
FILE -- In this Sept. 24, 2007 file photo, Trita Parsi listen to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad via video conferencing from New York at the National Press Club in Washington . Ahmadinejad was in New York to attend the United Nations general assembly.
(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
In this image made from video broadcast by Iran's IRIB television, Friday, June 19, 2009, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, center, light jacket, listens as Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, unseen, makes his address as part of Friday prayers at Tehran University. The address comes one day after hundreds of thousands of protesters in black and green flooded the streets of Tehran in a somber, candlelit show of mourning for those killed in clashes after Iran's disputed presidential election. (AP Photo/IRI EDITORS NOTE AS A RESULT OF AN OFFICIAL IRANIAN GOVERNMENT BAN ON FOREIGN MEDIA COVERING EVENTS IN IRAN, THE AP IS OBLIGED TO USE IMAGES FROM OFFICIAL SOURCES **
WASHINGTON – During a 29-year absence of formal diplomatic ties with Iran, the U.S. government used many channels to gain insights about the Islamic regime's inner workings, from CIA contacts and meetings with Iranian exiles to relayed information from friendly foreign diplomats.
But the government's lines into Iran remain critically thin, posing a challenge for the Obama administration as it tries to track and respond to an unfolding crisis that may threaten the foundations of Iran's theocratic regime.
Setting up talks with Iranian leaders was a signature feature of President Barack Obama's foreign policy upon entering office. But he had made little discernible progress over the past several months before political upheaval erupted in Tehran last week over the disputed outcome of a presidential election that opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi called rigged.
Washington's lack of normal diplomatic access — both to Iran's hard-liners and its reformers — is now handicapping the administration on at least two levels. It restricts the American view of events inside Iran, where the government has cracked down on independent media coverage of street protests. And it limits U.S. officials' grasp of more subtle political undercurrents.
"There's a huge gap in understanding Iran," said Trita Parsi, founder and president of the National Iranian American Council, a nonpartisan group that advocates expanded U.S.-Iranian contacts.
"There is no more effective way to understand the perceptions and intentions and concerns of the other side than to actually talk to them directly," Parsi said. "Not having done so in a robust way for 30 years has created misperceptions on both sides."
Parsi added that the U.S. has found ways to get around the lack of formal diplomatic ties, but "there's no substitute for actually being there on the ground."
Washington broke diplomatic relations with Tehran in April 1980, five months after Iranian students occupied the U.S. Embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. In April 1981 the Swiss government began representing U.S. interests in Tehran, providing a conduit for exchanges of messages.
At the time of the hostage-taking in November 1979, the U.S. government was caught by surprise at the student uprising, even though it had a diplomatic presence there at the time.
Now, with a new wave of popular unrest on the streets of Tehran, Washington is again scrambling to decipher Iran, only this time from afar.
In this decade the U.S. government has had a number of direct contacts with senior Iranian officials. Among them:
• A a series of meetings on Afghanistan in the early years after the overthrow of the Taliban regime. Iran has been invited to attend an international meeting next week in Italy on Afghanistan and Pakistan; the United States is scheduled to be represented there by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
• In 2007, high-level U.S. officials met several times with Iranian representatives to discuss Iraq.
• Last year the undersecretary of state for political affairs, William Burns, participated in a meeting, attended by Iran, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany, to discuss Iran's nuclear program.
Thomas Pickering, a former undersecretary of state for political affairs and a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said it is a common practice for embassies in Washington to share information culled from their diplomats' contacts inside Iran and with Iranian exiles around the world.
Last year the administration of President George W. Bush considered setting up a diplomatic outpost, known as an interest section, in the Swiss embassy in Tehran. The Iranians have a similar arrangement in Washington, with Iranian officials present in Pakistan's embassy.
But in late November, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice decided to leave the decision to the next administration.
The extent and frequency of U.S. contacts with Iranian opposition figures is even less clear than the meager channels to the authoritarian regime.
In part because of Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology, which the U.S. believes is a disguised effort to build nuclear weapons, U.S. intelligence agencies and diplomats have put a high priority on tracking a variety of Iranian activities.
The CIA has links to international business people who either travel to Iran or have encounters, through conferences or other events, with Iranians in fields of interest to the U.S.
The State Department in 2006 set up an Iran monitoring post in Dubai, across the Persian Gulf from Iran, to quietly expand links to Iranians in the region.
Dubai is widely described as a focus of Iranian intelligence, which keeps a close eye on — and may even have a hand in — Iranian business. The first director of the Dubai office was Jillian Burns, now an Iran and Iraq policy planner at the State Department.
Also in 2006 the State Department established "Iran watchers" in U.S. embassies in Europe, including in Berlin.
"Their job is to reach out, talk to Iranians," said Patrick Clawson, a Persian-speaking author of several books on Iran. He is deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank.
Clawson said the CIA has hired Iranian-Americans in this country to scour publicly available information produced by Iranians. The intelligence agencies and the departments of State and Defense also have put a much greater emphasis on training their officers in the Persian language and culture, he said.
"Just an explosion of people taking Persian courses," he said, adding that this has improved the government's ability to understand developments in Iran in the past few years.
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Ayatollah Khamenei make first address since disputed elections after week of protests
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It follows rally of 250,000 supporters of opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi through streets of Tehran yesterday
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei branded the British government the 'most treacherous' in the world today as he addressed followers for the first time since the disputed election.
The cleric used Friday prayers to make his extraordinary attack. Thousands of supporters who had packed a hall at Tehran University chanted: 'Death to the UK, American and Israel,' in the wake of his comments.
It follows the British Ambassador to Tehran being summoned to the Iranian Foreign Ministry earlier this week after Gordon Brown and David Miliband made 'interfering and rude' comments about the disputed election.
Mr Brown urged Iran to listen to it's people and warned the country's response to 'legitimate grievances' would affect its relationship with the Western world.
During his address this morning Khamenei also appealed for calm in the wake of demonstrations this week.
Yesterday opposition leader Mousavi received a rock star's welcome as he made the briefest appearance at a 250,000-strong rally.
The noise was deafening. 'Mousavi! We support you!,' they screamed, followed as well as chanting the politican's name until the vast public space resounded with their voices.
Mousavi, who was accompanied by his wife Zahra Rahnavard and second defeated candidate Mehdi Karoubi, attempted to speak through a loudhailer but few could hear him.
Demonstrations have sent a powerful message that Mousavi has the backing to sustain his unprecedented challenge to Iran's ruling clerics.
Even Ahmadinejad, named the landslide winner in the June 12 election, appeared to take the growing opposition more seriously and backtracked on his dismissal of the protesters as 'dirt and dust' and sore losers.
Mousavi, who claims the election was rigged and is demanding a new poll, spoke briefly to the vast crowd, calling for calm and restraint.
Yesterday, many in the huge crowd carried black candles, lighting them as night fell.
The demonstrators had marched silently until they arrived at the square, when some chanted 'Allahu Akbar' (God is Greatest).
TV showed protesters making V-for-victory gestures and holding pictures of Mousavi together with signs that said: 'Where's our Vote?'
One placard read: 'Our martyred brothers, we will take back your votes.'
Another said protesters also warned the government: 'We will not get exhausted and we will come every day.'
The crowds in Tehran and elsewhere have been able to organise despite a government clampdown on the Internet and mobile phones.
But Mousavi says the council supports Ahmadinejad, and he has demanded an independent investigation and a new election.
Patrick Clawson, deputy director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said: 'I don't think the supreme leader was that upset about the idea of Mousavi being president.
'Certainly now the big concern is if you give into these people, that suggests these sorts of popular protests can succeed, and that's not good from Khamenei's perspective.'
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