Obama will condemn Iran abuses

President Barack Obama will condemn Iranian government use of violence against peaceful protesters and other human rights abuses at a 12:30pm news conference, sources in touch with the administration say. The president’s planned news conference was moved from the Rose Garden to the James Brady briefing room.

The announcement will come after a weekend in which Iranian paramilitary and security crackdown killed from 10 to 19 demonstrators and onlookers, arrested and detained opposition supporters, kicked out most of the foreign press corps, arrested a dozen journalists and banned the rest from covering protests, and accused the United States, Britain and other nations of meddling. The British Embassy is reportedly evacuating families of diplomatic staff.

Iran’s Guardian Council, a top clerical body, today declared that there was no fraud in the vote count that found incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the landslide winner of elections, and that the elections would not be annulled.