AFP: The White House expressed support Saturday for those pressing for greater freedom in Iran, following hardliner Mahmood Ahmadinejad’s shock landslide victory. “We continue to stand with those who call for greater freedom for the Iranian people,” Maria Tamburri, a White House spokeswoman, told AFP.

AFP: The victory of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran’s presidential election is proof of the failure of western governments’ policy of “appeasement” to the Islamic republic, the president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) Maryam Rajavi said Saturday. “Western governments have some soul-searching to do after the clear failure of years of appeasement. They must ask themselves the question what has happened so that now we have extremists in control of all the levers of power,” Rajavi said in a telephone interview from her headquarters outside Paris.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jun. 25 – Defeated presidential contender Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani today lashed out at state institutions for illegally aiding his rival Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to win the elections.
In a statement, the former two-term President said, “I do not intend to present a complaint to the arbiters [Guardian Council”>, who have shown that they cannot and do not want to resolve it”.

Press Association: Supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran held a rally outside Downing Street today to protest against the “sham” presidential elections in Iran. A letter was delivered to No 10 calling on the British Government to adopt a firm policy towards the mullahs’ “dictatorship” and to abandon a policy of appeasement towards the ruling clique in Iran.

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.