The United States on Friday welcomed a call from former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani for the lifting of media restrictions imposed in the wake of opposition demonstrations in Iran.
"There are universal principles that we feel are very important here... as Mr Rafsanjani himself reflected today, freedom of the press and the ability of the media to fairly report what is happening there," said State Department spokesman Philip Crowley.
The spokesman carefully avoided making a comment on the ongoing debate over the legitimacy of the disputed Iranian presidential elections, which Rafsanjani and other opposition members believe was rigged in favor of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.
"You know, obviously, we continue to take stock of what's happening in Iran. This is not for the United States to resolve. This is a debate and a dispute that is going on within Iran," Crowley said.
Clashes in Tehran as Hashemi Rafsanjani warns regimeIranian riot police used batons and teargas today to break up defiant protests after prayers in Tehran, where Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the country's most powerful clerics, warned that the regime was "in crisis" and urged a release of prisoners detained in post-election unrest.
Rafsanjani, a bitter rival of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, broke his month-long silence to issue a stark warning that the Islamic Republic had lost popular support. His carefully crafted address stopped short of directly attacking Khamenei or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose victory in June's presidential poll has been widely denounced as a fraud. But its message was still strong.
"Today is a bitter day," Rafsanjani declared from the pulpit at Tehran University's sprawling prayer ground. "People have lost their faith in the regime and their trust is damaged. It's necessary to regain people's consent and restore their trust in the regime. Everyone has lost."
Mir Hossein Mousavi, the moderate former prime minister who says he won the election, sat in the front row with other VIPs as Rafsanjani spoke. Mehdi Karoubi, a reformist cleric who was also a candidate, was there too — and was jostled by thugs afterwards.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/17/iran-hashemi-rafsanjani-islamic-republic