Hardline incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a landslide victory in Iran's hotly disputed presidential vote, according to official results on Saturday that triggered mass opposition protests and furious complaints of cheating from his defeated rivals.
Riot police clashed with protestors in unrest not seen for a decade as thousands of supporters of main challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi took to the streets shouting "Down with the Dictator" after final results showed Ahmadinejad winning almost 63 per cent of the vote.
Moderate ex-premier Mousavi cried foul over election irregularities and warned the vote could lead to "tyranny," as some of his supporters were beaten by baton-wielding police.
The interior minister said Mousavi had won less than 34 per cent of the vote, giving Ahmadinejad another four-year term in a result that dashed Western hopes of change and set the scene for a possible domestic power struggle.
Iran's all-powerful supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hailed Ahmadinejad's victory and urged the country to unite behind him after the most heated election campaign since the Islamic revolution.
The vote outcome appears to have galvanised a grassroots movement for change after 30 years of restrictive clerical rule in a country where 60 per cent of the population was born after the revolution.
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