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By NASSER KARIMI and ANNA JOHNSON Associated Press
Hundreds of thousands of protesters dressed in black and green flooded the streets of Tehran on Thursday in a somber, candlelit show of defiance and mourning for those killed in clashes after Iran’s disputed presidential election.
The massive march — the fourth this week — sent a powerful message that opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has the popular backing to sustain his unprecedented challenge to Iran’s ruling clerics.
Even President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, named the landslide winner in the June 12 election, appeared to take the growing opposition more seriously and backtracked on his dismissal of the protesters as “dust” and sore losers.
The government tried to placate Mousavi and his supporters by inviting him and two other candidates who ran against Ahmadinejad to a meeting Saturday with Iran’s main electoral authority, the Guardian Council. Abbasali Khadkhodaei, a spokesman for the council, said it received 646 complaints from the three candidates.
Mousavi accuses the government of widespread vote-rigging and demands a full recount or a new election, flouting the will of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — a man endowed with virtually limitless powers under its constitution.
