In a June 23, 2009 meeting with the editorial staff of his newspaper, the reformist daily Etemad-e Meli, Mehdi Karroubi stated that he did not accept the election results and that Ahmadinejad's government was illegitimate.
He added that he had anticipated the rigging of votes in the elections, but had assumed that the large turnout would compensate for this.
He stated further that the anti-regime protests were not anti-revolutionary "Zionist ranting," as claimed by certain circles, but were simply the Iranian people demanding their rights.
Karroubi demanded to investigate how the "mafia networks" and "cancerous growths" that had managed to forge the elections had come into being.
Source: Soham News, Iran, June 24, 2009
