TEHRAN — Iran’s state-run news agency said Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won Iran’s presidential election in a landslide just two hours after the polls closed Friday night. But his main rival, Mir Hussein Moussavi, announced defiantly that he had won and charged that there had been voting “irregularities.”
“I am the absolute winner of the election by a very large margin,” Mr. Moussavi said during a news conference with reporters just after 11 p.m. Friday, adding: “It is our duty to defend people’s votes. There is no turning back.”
The conflicting claims, coming after an extraordinary campaign that saw vast street demonstrations and vitriolic televised debates, seemed to undermine the public legitimacy of the vote and to threaten unrest.
In recent days, Mr. Moussavi’s supporters were predicting a wide victory, citing voter surveys. And Mr. Ahmadinejad, the hard-line incumbent, had appeared on the defensive, hurling extraordinary accusations at some of the Islamic republic’s founding figures.
An hour after Mr. Moussavi declared victory, the state news agency reported that Mr. Ahmadinejad had won the election with 69 percent and that Mr. Moussavi had 28 percent. As the election commission announced new totals early Saturday morning, the numbers changed slightly, but the wide lead by Mr. Ahmadinejad did not.
The election commission said early Saturday morning that, with 77 percent of the votes counted, Mr. Ahmadinejad had won 65 percent and Mr. Moussavi had 32 percent, Reuters reported. Then at 8 a.m. Saturday, Iranian state media reported that Mr. Ahmadinejad had about 18 million votes and that Mr. Moussavi had 9 million. The other two candidates, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezai, each won about 250,000 votes, the state media reported.
The election commission is part of the Interior Ministry, which Mr. Ahmadinejad controls. Some lawmakers were already congratulating Mr. Ahmadinejad, and some of his supporters were celebrating in the streets, the news agency said.
Some analysts warned that Mr. Moussavi’s supporters might take to the streets to protest on Saturday, despite a firm warning against any demonstrations by the deputy commander of the Iranian national police, Ahmadreza Radan. Early on Saturday morning the Tehran police began a “maneuver” to maintain security, the news agency said.
The emotional campaign was widely seen as a referendum on Mr. Ahmadinejad’s divisive policies. It pitted Mr. Moussavi, a former prime minister who has pledged to move Iran away from confrontation with the West, combat economic stagnation and expand women’s rights, against Mr. Ahmadinejad’s economic populism, social conservatism, and hard-line foreign policy.
Many women, young people, intellectuals and members of the moderate clerical establishment backed Mr. Moussavi. Mr. Ahmadinejad drew passionate support from poor rural Iranians as well as conservatives.
At his news conference, Mr. Moussavi cited irregularities that included a shortage of ballots. He accused the government of shutting down Web sites, newspapers and text messaging services throughout the country, crippling the opposition’s ability to communicate during the voting.
Fraud has been a prominent concern for Mr. Moussavi’s campaign, with many of his allies warning that Mr. Ahmadinejad could use the levers of state — the military, the Revolutionary Guard, and the Basij militia — to cajole or intimidate voters, or even engage in outright fraud. In 2005, Mr. Karroubi, who is also a candidate in this election, accused the Basij of rigging the vote in Mr. Ahmadinejad’s favor.
At his news conference, Mr. Moussavi called on the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to help the country reach a “favorable conclusion.”
Ayatollah Khamenei, who has final authority over affairs of state, appears to be the only figure who could mediate between the two camps in the event of an open confrontation over the legitimacy of the vote. But it is not clear how much he knows about the crisis, or what role he might play.
Mr. Khamenei met on Friday with Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a cleric, former president and backer of Mr. Moussavi’s who had warned the supreme leader in an unusual open letter on Tuesday about the possibility of election fraud, according to a political analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the gravity of the situation.
While casting his ballot earlier in the day Friday, Ayatollah Khamenei had said that people were using texting to spread rumors, but it is unclear if that is why the services were shut down.
Amid the confusion overnight, a reformist Web site called Fararu said Mr. Moussavi was talking with the two other candidates, Mr. Karroubi and Mr. Rezai, to discuss the situation. Mr. Karroubi is a reformist cleric and Mr. Rezai is a conservative and the former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Tens of millions of Iranians crowded voting stations throughout the day, with long lines forming outside some polling stations well before they opened at 8 a.m.
Polls were originally due to close at 6 p.m., but voting was extended by four hours.
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