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Iran labels Mousavi agent of West

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Los Angeles Times

Published: July 5, 2009

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A right-wing newspaper close to Iran's supreme leader on Saturday accused the country's main opposition figure of being a dupe for Iran's foreign enemies and said he should face trial.

But Mir Hossein Mousavi, defeated presidential candidate and leader of a nascent reform movement, remained unbowed. The soft-spoken but defiant former prime minister responded by releasing his most detailed account yet of what he maintains was vote-rigging and irregularities in last month's re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, including an allegation that only the incumbent's allies were allowed to witness vote-counting election day.

In a sign of potential escalation of Iran's confrontation with the West, an Iranian military official said the "ground has been set" for a takeover of the British Embassy residence in north Tehran. Iranian officials have accused Britain of stirring up the large-scale public protests that roiled Tehran for several weeks after the June 12 vote.

The state-owned newspaper Kayhan, long considered a mouthpiece of Khamenei, Iran's highest political and religious authority, on Saturday described "undeniable facts and documented evidence" that Mousavi was a foreign agent on "a mission directed from abroad."

Hossein Shariatmadari, a hard-liner loyal to Khamenei and a staunch Ahmadinejad supporter, penned the piece, which represents a further effort to stigmatize a movement that was built on Mousavi's political campaign and fraud allegations and that drew hundreds of thousands into the streets.

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