BEIRUT AND TEHRAN — Opponents of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went on the offensive Wednesday, proclaiming his government "illegitimate." They vowed to continue disputing his reelection despite a violent crackdown on their protests and dire warnings against challenging the vote.
Hours earlier, in a potentially sharp escalation of the rift within the Iranian establishment, the pro-government Basiji militia asked prosecutors to investigate opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi on numerous allegations, including "disturbing the nation's security," according to a report by the Fars news agency.
After two weeks of street clashes, Tehran has remained calm for several days. Signaling a return to normality, cellphone text-messaging services, cut off the night before the June 12 election, were restored.
But the latest moves show that the election controversy continues to grip the Islamic Republic despite official attempts to move past the protests and crackdown.
"From now on we will have a government which, from the point of view of ties with the public, is in the weakest of positions," Mousavi, who according to the official returns lost to Ahmadinejad, wrote in a statement posted on his website and distributed via e-mail. "A majority of society, of which I personally am a member, do not accept the legitimacy of this government."
The heightened political posturing came as the Interior Ministry, controlled by a wealthy confidant of Ahmadinejad, ordered that election-related political activities stop now that the Guardian Council, which is headed by another ally of the president, has confirmed Ahmadinejad's reelection.
Other officials, including the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also have urged an end to the questioning of the election, calls that have been ignored.
"There's a deep fissure within the power elite," said Farhad Khosrokhavar, a political scientist at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, who returned from a visit to Tehran less than a week ago. "Khamenei is supposed to have the final word on everything. But all these people are implicitly defiant toward the supreme leader. All of them reject the notion that the election is over."
The government's actions are part of a broad attempt to use the instruments of state to neutralize a movement built on the presidential election campaigns of Mousavi and former parliament Speaker Mehdi Karroubi and the belief among their supporters that Ahmadinejad and his allies, including Khamenei, stole the election.
