Could President Ahmadinejad really have won 63 per cent of last Friday’s vote, 29 per cent more than Mir Hossein Mousavi, who had appeared to be riding such a wave of enthusiasm?

Much has been made in the past few days of a pre-election poll that showed Mr Ahmadinejad leading by a margin of two to one — even more than his official victory. “The fact may be that the re-election of President Ahmadinejad is what the Iranian people want,” the pollsters Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty wrote in The Washington Post.

This is a startling claim, but one that should be treated with caution. First, the poll was conducted three weeks before the vote — long before the Mousavi bandwagon began to roll. Second, it gave Mr Ahmadinejad only 34 per cent of the vote, and Mr Mousavi 14 per cent, with 27 per cent undecided. Third, polls in Iran are notoriously unreliable because its pollsters are unsophisticated and ordinary Iranians can be afraid of revealing their thoughts.

Of the last dozen polls, seven put Mr Mousavi ahead, with leads of up to 41.5 per cent, while five had Mr Ahmadinejad ahead, with leads of up to 37 per cent. They are, in short, all but useless.

There is no proof that Mr Ahmadinejad’s victory was secured by fraud, but there is plenty of circumstantial evidence.

The election authorities somehow counted about half the 39 million votes, by hand, within three hours of the polling stations closing — an astonishing feat.

The 24.5 million votes allegedly cast for Iran’s deeply divisive President would make him the most popular elected official in the history of the Islamic Republic, just as the economy is in the doldrums. Mohammed Khatami, a reformist, won 20 million votes in 1997.

The official results show that Mr Mousavi, an Azeri, only just beat Mr Ahmadinejad in West Azerbaijan province and lost in East Azerbaijan, his home province. Iranians who live in Britain are mostly educated and sophisticated, but official figures claim that about 70 per cent of them backed Mr Ahmadinejad.

Huge turnouts like last Friday’s 85 per cent traditionally help moderate candidates whose natural supporters are normally reluctant to legitimise the political system by voting.

On Tuesday Mr Mousavi, Mehdi Karoubi and Mohsen Rezai, the three losing candidates, presented Iran’s Guardian Council with a list of 15 other alleged irregularities. They included the exclusion of their representatives from polling stations and counts; shortages of ballot papers in opposition strongholds; packing of electoral committees with Ahmadinejad supporters; vote buying; improper use of state resources and media; and using the identity cards of dead people to cast ballots.

Mousavi aides claim that in 70 districts the number of votes counted exceeded the population, and that many polling stations shut while people were still queueing.

Finally, the speed with which the regime flooded the streets with security forces and took down telephone and internet services after the result suggests that plans were laid well in advance.

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