Ahmadinejad Re-Election Sparks Iran Clashes

Thousands of opposition supporters have clashed with police after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of Iran's presidential poll. Correspondents say the violence is the worst seen in Tehran in a decade.

Official results gave Ahmadinejad 63% of the vote, against 34% for Mir Hossein Mousavi (who called the results a "charade").

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised the 85% turnout, said the count was a "real celebration" & called for calm.

Booker Rising response: No embeddable link (grrr), but you can see video footage here thanks to the BBC. It was most shady that President Ahmadinejad declared victory hours before the polls - which had been extended on-site several hours to accommodate turnout - had even closed.

Autographed Letter Signed, a black moderate-conservative blog, calls the Iranian election - where the opposition ran on a "change" platform - an international version of the game Sorry: "The results are in!!!! Ahmadinejad won. Well they think but he has been declared the winner of the election. Like Barack Obama, he won by a landslide. 'Change' is indeed coming to Iran. You may ask why do I constantly emphasize the word 'change' with quotation marks. 'Change' has changed for me since Obama hijacked the word during his campaign. Change can be a good thing. We all need fresh ideologies and political dialogue that is engaging. However Obama’s use of the word 'change' was merely an empty campaign slogan - a catch word. Real change was never intended and I am certain that 'change' will be just as empty and unach[ie]ved in Iran."