June 24 (Bloomberg) -- Protesters clashed with riot police again today around Iran’s parliament, as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the country won’t annul the results of last week’s disputed presidential election.

Hundreds of people flocked to a central Tehran square, where police fired ammunition into the air and beat demonstrators protesting against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Associated Press reported, citing witnesses. Some protesters fought back, AP said.

“The Islamic establishment and people will never give in to forceful demands in regard to the election,” Khamenei, the highest authority among the Shiite Muslim clerics who rule Iran, told lawmakers today in Tehran, according to state television. “The violation of the election will lead to dictatorship.”

Khamenei’s remarks came after President Barack Obama yesterday stepped up criticism of Iran’s crackdown on protesters, reacting to the violent confrontations between the government and the opposition. Ahmadinejad’s challengers have said the June 12 election was rigged.

“The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings and imprisonments of the last few days,” Obama said at a White House news conference yesterday. “I strongly condemn these unjust actions.”

The government has banned opposition rallies, with security forces using water cannon, tear gas and clubs to disperse crowds. Some 457 people were arrested in Tehran on June 20, state-run Press TV said. At least 17 people have been killed in protests since the election, according to the government.

Facebook Communication

Farsi-language users of Facebook said on the social- networking Web site that a young woman was shot when riot police and militia tried to disperse protesters near parliament today.

It wasn’t immediately possible to verify the entries on Facebook, which Iranians have increasingly relied on to find out about the crisis since the government shut down or hampered other forms of communication.

The planned demonstration near parliament was “independent” and unconnected to the campaign of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main opponent in the presidential race, according to a statement on his Web site before the rally began.

“The law must be the last word in all issues,” Khamenei said. “If lawlessness prevails, then things will be difficult.”

Leader’s Warning

The supreme leader warned against factionalism among lawmakers, who gathered at the complex that includes his residence and a mosque, and urged them to support Ahmadinejad’s administration.

The Guardian Council, which oversees the country’s elections, yesterday ruled out an annulment of the election.

Obama said he’s waiting to see how the turmoil in Iran evolves before deciding how he might change his strategy of engaging the government there diplomatically to prevent the country from developing a nuclear weapon, which he called a “core national security interest” of the U.S.

“We don’t know yet how this thing is going to play out,” he said. “It is not too late for the Iranian government to recognize that there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy and prosperity for the Iranian people.”

‘Significant Questions’

Obama said “significant questions” cloud the election’s legitimacy. “Ultimately, the most important thing for the Iranian government to consider is legitimacy in the eyes of its own people, not in the eyes of the United States.”

Iran’s crackdown on protests is “obviously not encouraging” for any diplomatic breakthrough, he said.

He also said the U.S. and other nations aren’t interfering in Iran’s internal affairs.

Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights activist who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, told the British Broadcasting Corp.’s Persian service in a Geneva interview yesterday that she had asked European Union officials in Brussels to downgrade relations with Iran. She said she urged them to adopt “political sanctions” to force Iran to stop violence against protesters.

The U.S., the U.K. and Israel have been the focus of the Iranian leadership’s most vehement accusations of meddling since the protests began. Interior Minister Sadegh Mahsouli said today that demonstrators involved in unrest were financed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, an opposition group, the state-run Iranian Students News Agency reported.

Relations with U.K.

Iran, which hasn’t had diplomatic ties with the U.S. since 1980, will consider downgrading its relations with Britain, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said today, according to ISNA. Iran and the U.K. each expelled two of the other’s diplomats this week.

Iranian authorities have detained seven foreigners in connection with the protests, including some with British passports, Press TV cited Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei as saying.

Iran is holding hundreds of opposition activists, who risk torture, human rights groups said. Many are being held without access to their lawyers or families and without being formally charged, the New York-based Human Rights Watch and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said in e-mailed statements yesterday.

Special Court

The deputy head of Iran’s judiciary, Ebrahim Raeisi, said a special court will be set up to try detained opposition supporters and teach “a lesson to others,” the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported yesterday.

Zahra Rahnavard, Mousavi’s wife, demanded on his campaign Web site the quick release of those arrested during the protests. She was a force in Mousavi’s campaign, the first time in the 30 years since the country’s Islamic Revolution that a candidate’s wife has had such a prominent role.

Ahmadinejad won 63 percent of the vote to 34 percent for Mousavi, a former prime minister, according to the official tally.

Another defeated presidential candidate, former Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karrubi, likened Ahmadinejad’s government to the Taliban.

“You know well that those who support Ahmadinejad are those who promote a backward, Taliban version of Islam, something that is against the views of Imam Khomeini,” Karrubi said in an open letter to Ezzatollah Zarghami, head of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. The letter, which referred to the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the Islamic Revolution, was published yesterday on Karrubi’s Web site.

Mousavi’s campaign released a report yesterday detailing allegations of fraud and demanding a “truth commission.” The report alleged that ballots were printed the day of the election without serial numbers, and that ballot boxes may already have held votes before arriving at polling stations.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ali Sheikholeslami in London at alis2@bloomberg.net; Heather Langan in London at hlangan@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 24, 2009 14:16 EDT