There is no doubt that there has been large scale and unfair vote rigging against opposition Iranian presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi in last week's elections. This vote rigging has produced the most significant Tehran-based protests against the Islamic theocracy that has governed the country since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 're-election' is almost as questionable as that of former US president George W. Bush's Florida state victory which gave him the 2000 presidential election. In Iran though, Ahmadinejad's victory has been secured through likely fraud perpetrated on a large scale by a regime that says that it adheres to strict religious tenets. These tenets have regulated individual and societal behaviour since 1979 and while an older generation (with their memories of the late Shah Reza Pahlavi's US-backed corrupt and brutal rule) are more supportive of the regime, a new and younger generation born after the Islamic Republic of Iran's foundation are beginning to chafe under them in terms of, for example, women having to be compulsorily veiled when in public.

Overnight Friday (NZST), Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a direct threat to the protesters of the possibility of a Tiananmen Square type crackdown if they didn't back off from confronting the regime. Mousavi and his supporters are now considering their options in the wake of this undeniable threat of the use of paramilitary force. Indeed, video postings from protesters inside Iran on popular social networking sites like You Tube, Twitter and Facebook have shown the brutality exercised by the Revolutionary Guards (the regime's secret police) against protesters. This morning I heard an excerpt of an audio report on Radio New Zealand National from a Canadian journalist who was subjected to a brief but harsh interrogation at the country's Interior Ministry.

Notwithstanding the blatant human rights abuses that are being perpetuated by the regime (and have been for over 30 years) and a growing desire for greater human rights inside the country, one cannot discount the possible involvement of Western intelligence agencies in the Iranian election. Mousavi, known as a 'moderate' and a 'reformer' could be receiving clandestine assistance from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British MI6 (external intelligence) service with the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency lurking discreetly in the background. Therefore, the statement made by the Khamenei this morning that the US and Britain both represent "evil" could mean that the Iranian regime suspects or even knows of intelligence activity being carried out against it despite statements made by President Barack Obama that his administration favours dialogue with the country over its nuclear programme and other issues.

To the Iranians, this level of Western intervention is nothing new as in 1953, the left-wing, nationalist then premier Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown with direct CIA support and replaced by Shah Reza Pahlavi (who had gone into temporary exile) after Mossadegh had (in a popular move) nationalised the country's oil reserves which were owned by a consortium comprised of British and American interests. From that time on, the US backed the Shah and his repressive regime to the hilt until the advent of the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Western involvement has always therefore been premised on the geostrategic and economic importance that Iran has within the Persian Gulf region. Following 9/11 the Americans engaged in limited dialogue with the Iranians and even they secretly supported the US in its toppling of the Taliban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan which had been a thorn in the side of the Iranians. The election of Ahmadinejad in 2005 changed all that as, with the backing of the clerics, he renewed the regime's hostility to the US, particularly in the wake of the illegal American invasion of Iraq. Ahmadinejad was elected on a populist platform which advocated a wider redistribution of oil wealth towards the poor (due to his own origins as a child of working class parentage) and a re-assertion of the country's right to self-determination away from potential US influence.

Therefore, Ahmadinejad with the backing of the supreme leader and his acolytes, acted to strengthen the country's nuclear programme much to the chagrin of the Americans and the Israelis (who both have their own nuclear arsenals.) Besides, the Iranians decided to step up their support of fellow Shiites inside Iraq in their fight against the illegal American occupation. All of these moves and Ahmadinejad's appalling anti-Semitism have served to upset both countries (as well as Britain) in recent years.

Now the CIA, Mossad and MI6 have possibly (through indirect channels) sought to financially bankroll Mousavi's campaign in the hope that it will engender a more Western-friendly regime in Iran. After all, one can see the logic in this thinking as its neighbours on both sides (Iraq to the west and Afghanistan to the east) are under US-led occupation still and Iran would logically be the next target as the Islamic leadership possibly already fears that it is.

What the US and its allies have to be weary of is this - do they want to produce a potentially regionally destabilising civil war inside Iran between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi supporters? In the event even of a serious crackdown, would the Americans and their allies owe up to their role in it all? Also have they jumped on a legitimate domestic issue inside Iran of the desire for more human rights and political freedom in order to further their own interests?

This is what Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and Benjamin Netanyahu and their spymasters must ask themselves. Iran has been the victim of imperialist aggression in the recent past that has only served to ignite the forces of Islamist radicalism. Having said that, yes, I believe that the Iranian people deserve to be openly supported in their calls for greater freedom and civil society groups including trade unions, human rights networks and student organisations in the west should be supportive as well.

However, the Iranian people should be left to determine, in a peaceful, open and democratic way, their own future path and not fall victim again to the desires of Western expansionism through covert manipulation. The cost of taking that path has already been too high for both the Iranian people and the world.

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