Jerusalem — Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denied that the country’s recent elections were fixed, called on protesters to stop and blamed the “Zionist” media.
In his first public address since the June 12 elections, Iran’s highest ranking political and religious authority accused the opposition of “challenging democracy after the elections.”
Khamenei delivered a nearly two-hour sermon during Friday prayers at Tehran University, reportedly attended by tens of thousands of worshipers. He called on the opposition to take their protests off of the streets and to instead use legal channels to register their complaints about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory.
Turnout at the ballot box has been officially set at 85 percent, or 40 million voters, with Ahmadinejad winning by a margin of 11 million votes, or 60 percent of the vote. “How one can rig 11 million votes?” he asked. “The Islamic republic state would not cheat and would not betray the vote of the people.”
Khamenei blamed the “media belonging to Zionists, evil media” for fomenting the demonstrations.
He also warned that if street demonstrations don’t end, then “leading politicians will be held accountable for the chaos.”
Hundreds of thousands of protestors again on Thursday night demonstrated in the streets of Tehran, the sixth day of ever-increasing protests in the Islamic Republic’s capital.
“This election was a political earthquake for our enemies and a celebration for its friends,” Khamenei said. “This election showed religious democracy for the whole world to see.”
Reporters representing media from around the world have been barred from covering the demonstrations or opposition news conferences, and have been restricted to one transmission of news per day.
Iran’s Guardian Council, the main oversight body of the country’s constitution, was reportedly planning to convene a meeting of the three losing candidates to discuss their accusations, reportedly as early as Saturday.
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Promotional literature says the monitoring center's "modular architecture allows the monitoring and interception of all types of voice and data communication in all networks, i.e. fixed, mobile, Next Generation Network (NGN) and the Internet. The MC's [monitoring center's] unified view-concept greatly facilitates investigative work and opens completely new and efficient ways to pursue leads."
Ben Roome, a spokesman for NSN, said, "We provide these systems to be used under the applicable laws in their countries and make sure we are abiding by U.N. and [European Union] export regulations and code of conduct. We provided the monitoring center to Irantelecom. We are not going to comment on the use of it. It is there to record lawful intercepts."
But William Daly, a former CIA signal-intelligence officer for the agency's Office of Science and Technology who retired in 2000, said the monitoring center in Iran will be used to "monitor dissidents and those ayatollahs who oppose the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei]."
Mr. Daly, who provided technical assistance on surveillance missions for the CIA, said that lawful intercept as a concept was created by the cell-phone industry to provide law enforcement agencies the ability to track criminals and terrorists.
Indeed, the telecommunications industry's own international standards require that data networks allow law enforcement to intercept phone calls, e-mails and other electronic data.
"This functionality is offered by all major mobile and fixed network system vendors," Mr. Roome said. "Such functionality can provide the proper authorities with an important tool for the investigation of serious criminal activities, such as terrorism, child pornography or drug trafficking. The use of such surveillance is based on local legislation and typically overseen by high-level independent government bodies, such as courts."
Mr. Daly said, however, that the technical switches telecommunications companies embed in their systems can easily be abused.
"The concept of 'lawful intercept' came about with the development of cellular phones," he said. "They had no way of monitoring them if it did not go through a landline switch. With [Global System for Mobile communications, or GSM], it is possible to communicate in the cell without going to the switch. This was part of the basic argument for why they developed it. But the real answer is that governments want to know what their people are doing."
Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said the monitoring center NSN sold to Iran last year should be regulated as though it were "dual-use technology" - items that can have military as well as civilian applications.
"There are a lot of export controls in place in Western countries on technology that might have a dual military purpose," he said. "But there are virtually no restrictions on the export of high-tech equipment that can be used to monitor or control free expression."