Iran’s hardline President dashed Barack Obama’s hopes of improved relations yesterday by likening him to George Bush and saying that talks were pointless.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seized on President Obama’s criticism this week of Iran after the election to accuse him of meddling in the internal affairs of the Islamic Republic and suggest that his recent overtures were meaningless.

“Mr Obama made a mistake to say those things,” Mr Ahmadinejad said. “I wonder why Mr Obama, who has come with the slogan of change, fell into this trap and said things that previously Bush used to say . . . Do you want to speak with this tone? If that is your stance then what is left to talk about?”

For good measure Mr Ahmadinejad described the leaders of Britain and other European nations as a “bunch of politically retarded people”.

Mr Obama took office hoping to end 30 years of emnity between Iran and the “Great Satan”, and to find a way of curtailing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He initially offered only muted criticism of Mr Ahmadinejad’s hotly disputed election victory but faced growing domestic pressure to speak out and on Tuesday declared that he was “appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings, the imprisonments of the past few days”.

In Iran the regime’s suppression of dissent continued but so did the opposition’s defiance of what it regards as a coup détat.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated candidate, said that he had been isolated and vilified by the regime in an attempt to make him withdraw his demand that the election be anulled, but would not be intimidated.

“I won’t refrain from securing the rights of the Iranian people . . . because of personal interests and the fear of threats,” he said in a message on his website.

The former Prime Minister, who has not been seen in public since last Thursday, said that his ability to communicate had been severely restricted by the closure of his newspapers and interference with his website, but promised to prove that those responsible for rigging the presidential ballot were now orchestrating the violent repression of his supporters.

He called for continued resistance, and dismissed the regime’s claims that the street protests were fomented by Britain and the West. “The green movement is not dependent on foreigners,” he wrote.

State media reported that eight members of the pro-government Basij militia have been killed in addition to seventeen protesters.

Although the regime’s security forces have largely quelled last week’s massive street demonstrations there were other signs that the struggle continues behind the scenes.

More than 100 MPs, including Ali Larijani, the parliamentary Speaker, and his deputies refused to attend Mr Ahmadinejad’s victory party on Wednesday night, according to Iranian newspapers.

Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, 85, an outspoken cleric who was once seen as the likely successor to Ayatollah Khomeini as Supreme Leader, issued a statement declaring that if legitimate protests were banned pressures would build that could “uproot the foundations of the Government”.

The clerics, a powerful constituency, have yet to take sides but many of them loathe Mr Ahmadinejad and his patron, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader. The two men rely increasingly on military power, not religious authority, to stay in office.

Meanwhile, the arrests continued in a country where anyone who disputes the election result is now treated as an enemy. Seventy reform-minded professors were arrested after meeting Mr Mousavi late on Wednesday. His top legal adviser, Professor Ardeshir Amid Arjmand, was said to have been seized from his home on Monday night. The 25 staff of his newspaper have also been locked up.

The regime is said to have rounded up more than 140 Mousavi supporters including political activists, journalists and university lecturers, as well as hundreds of demonstrators.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, condemned the regime’s attempt to blame Britain and the outside world for the unrest. He told the BBC: “The truth is there’s a crisis of credibility between the Iranian Government and their own people. It’s not a crisis between Iran and America or Iran and Britain, however much the Iranian Government wants to suggest that.”

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