Iran strongly condemned the United States' comments on its presidential election on Saturday, urging Washington to "respect Iranians' choice", the official IRNA news agency reported.

"The American administration which claims to be an advocate of democracy should respect the Iranian nation's choice and stop intervening in Iran's internal affairs," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi was quoted as saying.

Asefi said the massive participation of Iranian voters in two rounds of presidential elections proved their interest in determining their own destiny. "Iranians' votes also demonstrated their strong opposition to USpolicies," he said.

Asefi said that the US policies towards Iran were based on interfering in Tehran's internal affairs, which he said is utterly "incorrect". Asefi also made fun of US officials' contradictory remarks.

"Though the Americans had already referred to Iranian presidential elections as having quite 'known' results, now the US State Department spokesman describes the results as being quite 'unpredictable' and 'accidental'," he said.

The spokesman concluded that the recent elections should teach alesson to the American officials to be more cautious and avoid making unfounded remarks. US State Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore said earlier in theday that Iran was out of step with the rest of the region and the currents of freedom and liberty.

Iran announced on Saturday that ultra-conservative Tehran mayor Mahmood Ahmadinejad had defeated pragmatic former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani with a landslide win in the ninth presidential election runoff.

Ahmadinejad's success has been viewed as a bad news for the frozen relation between Washington and Tehran due to his hardline stance. Iran and the United States have been at enmity for 26 years, with Washington branding Iran's election as undemocratic and rigged.

Source: Xinhua