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Iran’s Supreme Leader is raising doubts about allegations that the U-S and Britain were behind the street protests that rocked the country after June elections. The World’s Laura Lynch reports.

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KATY CLARK:  I’m Katy Clark and this is The World. I’m Katy Clark and this is The World. Mahmoud Ahmedinejad may be the official president of Iran… But the violent protests that followed his re-election in June continue to reverberate.  Ahmedinejad and other hardliners have claimed the U.S. and Britain played a direct role in the protests that paralyzed the country. Now Iran’s supreme leader is raising doubts about that claim.  The World’s Laura Lynch reports.

LAURA LYNCH: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei chose an audience of students to reveal his latest thoughts on the protests that swept through Iran after the election.  Khameini sent a message to those who suggest the opposition leaders were guided by Western nations.

AYATOLLAH ALI KHAMENEI: I am not accusing the involved people of being foreign agents, such as agents of the U.S. or Britain.  I’m not making such a claim because such a thing has not been proven to me.  I can’t make a claim about something that hasn’t been proven.

LAURA LYNCH: One of the people who went to the streets, he asked to be called Akbar, says Khamenei is saying what those in the opposition already know.

AKBAR: There was never absolutely no outside influence whatsoever.  I was on the streets day after day.  This was Iran; this was the public, this was discontentment, in all its aspects appearing that this is what is so alarming for the government as a leader.  This is an internal issue where the public is outraged by what is happening.

LAURA LYNCH: Khamenei has been struggling to maintain his once-iron grip on power in Iran.  Before the election, no one dared question him.  He stayed above the political fray.  But in the tumult that followed the vote, Khamenei openly backed President Ahmedinejad.  Now the supreme leader is facing more and more open criticism.  The most recent comes from Iran’s most senior dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hoeseein Ali Montazeri – he has labeled  Khameini’s Iran a dictatorship.  Trita Parsi of the Iranian American Council says Khameini has good reason to try to mollify the opposition.

TRITA PARSI: First and foremost is the fact that the factional infighting in Iran has reached such a tremendously bitter level that it’s actually a risk to the system as a whole, and at some level I think Khamenei is interested in trying to reduce the escalation.  On the other hand, he’s also eager to rebuild his credibility as someone that is standing above party politics, something that he used to be viewed as but after the way that he handled the elction crisis and the election fraud, he has lost much of that credibility, if not all of it

LAURA LYNCH: Khameini’s comments also come in the midst of trials of dozens of activists and politicians who have made statements in court that foreign agents were involved in creating unrest.  Rights groups say the confessions were coerced and the trials tainted. Shaul Bakash is professor of Middle Eastern Studies at George Mason University in Virginia

SHAUL BAKASH: He has had to respond in some way to the harsh criticism in Iran of the show trials that are taking place at the moment and the attempt to accuse also the leaders of the political parties opposed to the present government.  But at the same time he seems to be saying that something untoward took place in Iran with the cooperation of Iranians.  He doesn’t specifiy who in the troubles that followed the elections.

LAURA LYNCH: And indeed Khameini also spoke about the involvement of Iran’s enemies, as he called them, and he condemned opposition leaders for publicly claiming that those in jail have been abused.   Bakash says the mixed signals mean little will actually change in the coming days and weeks.

SHAUL BAKASH: So it’s not at all clear to me that this message will bring to an end the trial that is now underway in Tehran of several of the leaders of the two opposition political parties.

LAURA LYNCH: If Khameini is hoping to bring the opposition back into line, he may have more work to do.  For his part, Akbar  thinks the Supreme Leader has lost too much authority, it will be almost impossible for him to hold on to power

SHAUL BAKASH: I think it’s too little, too late to diffuse what is going on.  He’s against the walls.  There is this massive opposition within the clerical establishment against him, within the bazaar and within the populate.

LAURA LYNCH: Khameini isn’t showing signs of stepping down, but the divisions within Iran aren’t going away; neither are the challenges to the once unquestioned Supreme Leader.  For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.

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