Threatening to crush dissent, the powerful Revolutionary Guards warned protesters on Monday that they would face a “revolutionary confrontation” if they returned to the streets to challenge the presidential election results in defiance of the country’s leadership.

Within hours of the warning, several hundred protesters gathered in central Tehran, and police used tear gas and fired into the air to disperse them, news agencies reported.

“There is a massive, massive, massive police presence,” to head off any attempt to demonstrate, Associated Press quoted a witness in Tehran as saying.

The warning, on the Guards’ website, was issued despite an admission by Iran’s most senior panel of election monitors that the number of votes cast in 50 cities exceeded the actual number of voters, according to a state television report.

The discrepancies could affect some three million ballots. But the authorities insisted that the discrepancies did not violate Iranian law. The Guardian Council, charged with certifying the election, said it was not clear whether they would decisively change the result.

A Revolutionary Guards’s statement on Monday told protesters to “be prepared for a resolution and revolutionary confrontation with the Guards, Basij and other security forces and disciplinary forces” if they continued their protests, news reports said.

Opposition Leader Mir Hussein Moussavi has urged the protesters to continue their defiance, but he could face arrest for doing so.

“Moussavi’s calling for illegal protests and issuing provocative statements have been a source of recent unrests in Iran,” Ali Shahrokhi, head of Parliament’s judiciary committee, semi-official Fars news agency reported, according to Reuters.

... contd.