Smash hit

Speaking after talks with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, he said that their two countries spoke with “one voice” in condemning the regime’s behaviour.

The foreign ministers of the G8 powers, meeting in Italy, issued a statement deploring the crackdown and urging Iran to resolve the crisis over the disputed election through democratic dialogue. “We deplore post-electoral violence which led to the loss of lives of Iranian civilians and urge Iran to respect fundamental human rights, including freedom of expression,” the G8 ministers said in a joint statement.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said: “The violence we have seen over the last ten days and the killings and the beatings are deplorable and they show a failure to protect their own people.

“There is a crisis of credibility not between Iran and the West, but between the Iranian counting of the votes and the Iranian people.” Even Sergei Lavrov, the Foreign Minister of Russia, which is helping Iran to develop nuclear power, said that he was seriously concerned by the regime’s use of force, and urged Tehran to settle all issues in a democratic way.

The regime appears impervious to such criticism. For now it is concerned only with survival. “They believe the world will eventually have to deal with it,” an analyst said.

Iran's obscene denial

It is the oldest trick in the Iranian book: discredit opponents by painting them as dupes of great, middling or little “Satans”.

All week the state media have been filled with tales of foreign powers whipping up protests to bring down the mullahs. Many vices are prohibited in this bastion of Islamic virtues but evidently not bald-faced lying.

Nothing has been more obscene, however, than the campaign to avoid blame for the death of Neda Soltan, the innocent demonstrator fatally shot last Saturday.

It gagged her family and stopped them mourning or burying her with dignity. Then it started accusing foreign agents and their Iranian stooges of killing her. Jon Leyne, the BBC correspondent in Tehran, allegedly hired a thug to shoot her so that he could get good pictures. Officials have variously claimed she was shot by fellow protesters, foreign agitators or the CIA.

Arash Hejazi, the doctor who was standing next to Miss Soltan and tried to save her life , has now risked permanent exile to tell the truth. She was shot in her chest by a basij militiaman on a motorcycle, he told The Times.

The man was caught by the crowd. He escaped with his life because, unlike the regime and contrary to its lies, the protesters eschew violence.

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