The Guardian: Iran’s presidential election was thrown into uncharted territory yesterday after a hardline candidate who unexpectedly won his way into a run-off vote was accused of ballot-rigging.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Jun. 19 – Iran’s former Parliament Speaker and presidential hopeful Mehdi Karroubi, who came in third in Friday’s presidential election, today resigned his membership of the powerful State Expediency Council and stepped down as an adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in protest against rigging of the polls “by sections of the Revolutionary Guard and the [paramilitary”> Bassij”.

AP: The front-runner in Iran’s presidential runoff sought to rally moderates Sunday by warning that his hard-line opponent would run a totalitarian regime, a charge made amid suspicions the powerful Revolutionary Guard will rig the vote for conservatives. One losing candidate already has accused the Revolutionary Guard and its vigilante supporters of fixing votes during the first round of balloting.

Iran Focus: Tehran, Jun. 19 – Some 1,000 copper workers in the south-eastern Iranian city of Kerman staged a hunger
strike in protest against the authorities’ refusal to improve working conditions.

Washington Post: The hard-line, working-class mayor of Tehran will face former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a millionaire cleric, in a runoff election for Iran’s presidency next week, according to first-round results announced Saturday. Rafsanjani, who came in first, had been
a favorite in recent polls.

AFP: A US plane with 255 passengers on board was forced to make an emergency landing in Tehran early Sunday after experiencing technical problems, airport officials told AFP. The Northwest Airlines DC 10, en route from Mumbai to Amsterdam “landed here at 4:00 am today (2330 GMT Saturday) because it had a problem with the cargo hold,” Mehrabad airport spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh said.

AFP: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday slammed the presidential election in Iran as failing to be a legitimate exercise in democracy. Rice criticized the election, saying it “took place with an unelected few having decided who could run, with thousands of people having been disqualified, with women having been disqualified altogether.”

Reuters: An exiled Iranian opposition leader dismissed Iran’s presidential election as a sham on Saturday and urged foreign leaders not to recognise the vote. Centrist cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani faces a run-off against hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after Friday’s election in which no candidate secured outright victory and turnout was 62 percent, an Iranian Interior Ministry source said in Tehran.