A smiling Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation's supreme leader, met Tuesday night with the representatives of all four presidential candidates, assuring them that fraud allegations would be investigated.
On Wednesday, a newscaster on state-controlled television slyly updated Ahmadinejad's comparison of Mousavi supporters to sore losers leaving a soccer game with a reference to a widely watched international match Wednesday between Iran and South Korea.
The game itself helped illustrate how widespread Mousavi's support has become. A number of players wore green ribbons around their wrists.
However, the newscaster cited a different lesson to be learned from the game, which ended in a 1-1 draw. "During the game today between Iran and South Korea, it doesn't matter which player scores a goal, so long as Iran wins," he said.
The website of Iran's English-language Press TV satellite channel acknowledged Wednesday that "hundreds of thousands" had joined in rallies in the capital and other cities, among the first cracks in a wall of media silence or derision.
Officials and media argue that the West has exploited a minor domestic political squabble to foment Iranians against the state. Iranian officials summoned the Czech, French, German and British ambassadors Tuesday to complain. On Wednesday, they summoned the Swiss ambassador, who represents U.S. interests.
Authorities have been unable to quell the protests the way they suppressed student uprisings in 1999 and 2003, using more blunt instruments of power.
They've arrested a number of prominent reformist figures, including, on Wednesday, the outspoken former deputy interior minister, Saeed Leylaz, and sociology professor Hamid-Reza Jalaeipour.
Details also emerged about an attack by pro-government vigilantes on dormitories of Tehran University early Monday in which at least five and as many as seven people were shot or stabbed to death. According to sources in Tehran, doctors at a hospital refused to work as a sign of protest over the killings.
Former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, a confidant of Khamenei, summoned chancellors of medical universities for a meeting in which he urged them to crack down on campus protests.
The Revolutionary Guard, which launched a cyber-crimes unit this year, warned that any Iranian posting provocative material regarding the unrest on blogs or websites would be punished.
