Obama toughens stance on Iran crackdown

In his strongest comments since the crisis erupted 10 days ago, Obama used unambiguous language to assail the Iranian government during a news conference at the White House, calling himself “appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings, and imprisonments of the past few days.’’

In Tehran, the government continued to move aggressively yesterday to crush popular protests, setting up a special court for demonstrators, detaining hundreds of independent and opposition journalists and activists, and sending a force of police officers and militiamen onto the streets.

The comprehensive crackdown left the center of Tehran eerily quiet, given the huge demonstrations and clashes of recent days. Arrests and intimidation left the opposition with no visible leadership.

Stepping up its assertion of victory, the government took the provocative step yesterday of announcing its intention to certify the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and of having him sworn in as president by early August. The spokesman for the Guardian Council, a panel of clerics that oversees and certifies election results, flatly rejected all claims of electoral fraud, sparking the most sustained challenge to the government since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

There were, however, growing signs of divisions within in the alliance united behind Ahmadinejad. Members of Parliament summoned the ministers of justice, intelligence, and the interior to a hearing.

“I don’t think anyone really knows what comes next,’’ said an Iranian political analyst, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

While there was no talk of political compromise, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, agreed to extend by five days the actual certification of the election - a move that appeared largely symbolic, since the council announced earlier in the day that it would certify the results.

In Washington, Obama praised what he called the courage and dignity of the demonstrators, especially the women who have been marching, and said that he had watched the “heartbreaking’’ video of a 26-year-old Iranian woman whose last seconds of life were captured by video camera after she was shot on a Tehran street.

“While this loss is raw and extraordinarily painful,’’ he said, “we also know this: Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history.’’

Yet Obama has limited tools for bringing pressure to bear on the Iranian government.

After the news conference, administration officials said there was little they could do to influence the outcome of the confrontation between the government and the protesters. And more so now than even a few days ago, they said, the prospects for any dialogue with Iran over its nuclear program appear all but dead for the immediate future.

Obama has been under pressure, especially from conservatives, to align the United States more forcefully with the protesters. Yesterday, he dismissed suggestions that he had changed his tone toward Iran in response to critical comments from Senator John McCain of Arizona and other Republicans.

In sometimes testy exchanges with reporters, Obama defended himself, contending that even the moderate tone he had struck previously had been twisted by Iran’s government to suggest that the protests had been engineered by the United States.

“They’ve got some of the comments that I’ve made being mistranslated in Iran, suggesting that I’m telling rioters to go out and riot some more,’’ Obama said, referring to accounts that the White House said surfaced late last week and over the weekend. “There are reports suggesting that the CIA is behind all this. All of which is patently false. But it gives you a sense of the narrative that the Iranian government would love to play into.’’

On the diplomatic front yesterday, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain announced that his country had expelled two Iranian diplomats, a response to Tehran’s expulsion of two British diplomats on Monday.