June 27 (Bloomberg) -- A leading Iranian cleric urged authorities to punish demonstration organizers to deter the opposition from seeking to annul the June 12 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“I ask the judiciary to behave harshly and cruelly with the leaders of the protests, as they are fed by the U.S. and Israel, so that it will teach a lesson to others,” Ahmad Khatami told worshippers yesterday in Tehran. Protesters who use weapons should face the death penalty, he said.

Khatami’s remarks, in a sermon cited by the state-run Iranian Students News Agency, came hours before President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Iran’s government to halt the violent crackdown on demonstrators and said the Persian Gulf nation must be blocked from gaining a nuclear weapon.

“A government that treats its own citizens with that kind of ruthlessness and violence and that cannot deal with peaceful protesters who are trying to have their voices heard in an equally peaceful way I think has moved outside of universal norms,” Obama said at a joint news conference with Merkel at the White House.

Merkel said the Iranian people have a right “to have their votes be counted” and to see that the election results are substantiated.

Ahmadinejad’s main challenger on the ballot, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, this week repeated his demand for the election result to be scrapped due to vote-rigging and urged demonstrators to continue the protests, saying they are legal under the constitution.

‘Words of Force’

Khatami, who is one of 86 clerics in the Assembly of Experts, a body that elects and can remove the Shiite Muslim-led nation’s supreme leader, said calls to annul the vote are “words of force.”

The Guardian Council will set up a commission to oversee the recounting of 10 percent of the presidential votes and issue a public report on the findings, the state-run Iranian Students News Agency said. The media will be able to attend the recount by the commission, which will include former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, ex-parliament Speaker Gholam-Ali Hadad Adel and Prosecutor General Qorban-Ali Najaf-Abadi.

“None of Mousavi’s claims were right and we’ve had the healthiest election,” a council spokesman, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, was cited as saying by the Khabar newspaper on its Web site. “Except for small breaches that are seen in every election, no major violation has been committed. I can firmly say that no election fraud has been committed.”

Week’s Notice

The Interior Ministry told the Mousavi camp that requests for permission to hold a rally must be received a week in advance, a demand that hasn’t been made of Ahmadinejad’s supporters, according to Mousavi’s Web site. Previous requests for permission to hold pro-Mousavi rallies have been rejectedms.

Protesters who defied a ban on opposition demonstrations in the two weeks since the election have been met with water cannon, tear gas and clubs as security forces tried to disperse crowds. Independent confirmation of the events has been limited, with foreign journalists expelled or ordered to remain in their offices.

The government said 13 protesters and eight Basij militiamen died, with hundreds of demonstrators arrested.

Iranians circumventing government disruption of the Internet and mobile phone networks have used social-networking Web sites to allege that dozens of protesters were killed by police and the militia. The subjects of the postings include Neda Agha Soltan, a young woman whose death from gunshot wounds was captured in a video shown around the world.

‘Completely Destroyed’

The state is entitled to act against protesters who are “ruining public places, setting fire to mosques and buses, making society insecure and frightening people” and “fight with them until they are completely destroyed,” Khatami said in his Friday prayers sermon.

Rioters who use weapons are “mohareb,” a word for those who fight against society, and “Islam suggests that maximum punishment should be given to moharebs,” Khatami said, in a reference to the death penalty.

The Group of Eight foreign ministers, meeting in Italy, yesterday rebuked Iran over its crackdown on post-election demonstrations and called for a speedy end to the crisis “through democratic dialogue and peaceful means.”

Similar Sermons

Clerics at Friday prayers across Iran delivered a message similar to Khatami’s, including a denunciation of the West and foreign news media, according to reports on the state-run Mehr news agency. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gave last week’s Tehran sermon, an internationally televised event in which he backed Ahmadinejad, upheld the election result and deemed the protests illegal.

“Foreign media, especially the British and American media, showed extreme evil,” said Khatami, who isn’t related to former President Mohammad Khatami. “I’m surprised they are allowed to wander in the country and report with their satellite phones.”

Khatami reminded followers that Khamenei’s word is to be obeyed like a “command from God,” a possible reference to Mousavi’s criticism this week of the supreme leader for his support for Ahmadinejad.

“The supreme leader’s support of the government in normal conditions is useful, but it is not in the country’s interest that the supreme leader and the president are considered as one,” said Mousavi, who is among those in the current Iranian political establishment who took part in the Islamic Revolution that ousted the monarchy in 1979.

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

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 26, 2009 15:53 EDT