But accusations that there was indeed voter fraud are supported by an analysis by professor Ali Ansari of the Iran Institute at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, which was published by the British think-tank Chatham House last week. Ansari compared the official Iranian election results by province with the results of the 2005 election and the 2006 census. These are the highlights.

1) In two conservative provinces voter turnout was more than 100 percent. The Guardian Council itself has confirmed that this was the case in fifty cities, but it called it non-conclusive and went on to ignore it.

2) Compared to 2005 the conservative vote was up 113 percent. This is said to be the result of the high voter turnout, suggesting that a silent conservative majority votes massively for Ahmadinejad. The results don't support this. In this scenario, the provinces with the highest voter turnout should then have shown the best result for Ahmadinejad, but this is not the case.

3) The official results show that president Ahmadinejad, in a third of all provinces, won not just all of the conservative vote but also all of the centre voters, all of the new voters and 44 percent of people who voted for reformist candidates in earlier elections.

4) In 2005, 2001 and 1997, the conservative candidates proved very unpopular in rural areas. It is a myth that people in rural areas tend to vote conservative. It is unlikely that rural provinces that didn't vote conservative in earlier elections suddenly and massively went over to Ahmadinejad.