Reuters: The election of an ultra-conservative as Iran’s next president will lead to more repression at home and fuel Tehran’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons, an exiled opposition leader said on Saturday.
France-based Maryam Rajavi, self-styled president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said the elections had been rigged and widely boycotted.

AFP: Iran is “out of step” with a trend toward freedom and
liberty in its region, the US State Department said Friday after hardliner Mahmood Ahmadinejad won Iran’s “flawed” presidential election. “With the conclusion of the election in Iran, we have seen nothing that dissuades us from our view that Iran is out of step with the rest of the region and the currents of freedom and liberty that have been so apparent in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon,” State Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore said.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Jun. 25 – “Ahmadinejad? Who’s he?”
This was the typical reaction of most Iranians a day after the first round of presidential elections in Iran, when they heard that the two candidates facing each other in the run-off were veteran politician Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the little-known, ultra-conservative mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Jun. 25 – A 49-year-old former commander of the Revolutionary Guards became the sixth President of the Islamic Republic of Iran in a “landslide” victory over former President Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, cementing the grip of ultra-conservatives led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on all the levers of power in the theocratic state. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Mayor of Tehran since April 2003, was unknown to most Iranians before the first round of presidential elections on June 17.

The Guardian: Iran’s presidential election was hit by fresh ballot-rigging allegations last night as voters chose between a veteran establishment candidate and a hardliner promising to restore the values of the Islamic revolution. The head of the central electoral committee called on Tehran’s provincial governor to suspend balloting amid claims of violations and abuses. But voting was extended by at least two hours.

Washington Post: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hard-line
mayor of Tehran who has invoked Iran’s 1979 revolution and expressed doubts about rapprochement with the United States, won a runoff election Friday and was elected president of the Islamic republic in a landslide, the Interior Ministry announced early Saturday.