Iran: New poll finds strong domestic support for regime

Despite persistent mass demonstrations protesting June's disputed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a new survey of Iranian public opinion released here Saturday suggests majority domestic support for both him and the country's basic governing institutions. Four out of five of the 1,003 Iranian respondents interviewed in the survey rekeased by WorldPublicOpinion.org (WPO), a project of the highly respected Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) of the University of Maryland, said they considered Ahmadinejad to be the legitimate president of Iran. Sixty-two percent of respondents said they had "a lot of confidence" in the declared election results, which gave Ahmadinejad 62.6 percent of the vote within hours of the polls' closing Jun. 12 and which were swiftly endorsed by the Islamic Republic's Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Three of four respondents said Khamenei had reacted correctly in his endorsement. Opposition candidates and their supporters contested the official results, setting off mass protests centred in Tehran. At least 30 people were reported killed and thousands more arrested by the regime's paramilitary and security forces in the days and weeks that followed in what most analysts consider the most serious domestic challenge to the Islamic Republic in its 30-year history.