Ayatollah Khamenei has mobilized thousands of vigilantes armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and wearing bullet-proof vests to Teheran University where rioting is in its fifth day. Despite reports Friday that the protests had been contained, the student uprising has now spread to two additional cities.
[Gunshots were heard early Monday, Reuters reported. "I heard three gunshots quite clearly," a Reuters correspondent at the scene said. "Immediately after the gunshots some of these hard-liners jumped on their motorbikes and headed in the direction of the (sound of the) shots."
The crackdown order has been viewed as an act of desperation. The mullahs who inherited Ayatollah Khomeini's 1979 revolution, have been under mounting pressure since the fall of the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.
Determined protesters are demonstrating against the Khamenei regime as well as President Mohammed Khatami who ran on a reform ticket but is increasingly viewed as a foil for the ruling mullahs.
After reports Friday that the crackdown had succeed in limiting the demonstrations to Teheran University, anti-regime demonstrations have now spread to the cities of Isfahan
and Shiraz. Student organizers said clashes between police and demonstrators
continued overnight Sunday.
In Washington, the Bush administration has expressed dismay over Iran's
crackdown. The White House urged Teheran to permit peaceful dissent.
"The United States views with great concern the use of violence against
Iranian students peacefully expressing their political views," White House
spokesman Ari Fleischer said in a statement.
The student unrest has been building in advance of the anniversary on
July 9 of the bloody protests in 1999.
In a reversal, the Teheran regime on Friday employed the Basij militia to stop reformist students
from commemorating the fourth anniversary of the bloody anti-regime
protests.
On Wednesday, Khamenei officially ordered his security forces not to to suppress the rioting. Basij members undergo military training and many of them have been equipped with motorcycles to pursue and assault suspected student protesters.
"Leaders do not have the right to have any pity whatsoever for the
mercenaries of the enemy," Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei said in a
television broadcast on Thursday. "If the Iranian nation decides to deal
with the rioters, it will do so in the way it dealt with it on July 14,
1999."
"Khamenei has lost his equillibrium and control and does not know what to do," said Assad Homayoun who heads the Washington, D.C. foundation, Azadegan. "Also he is not sure the armed forces will continue to support him. The situation is similar to that in Romania in which the armed forces suddenly changed loyalties and took the people's side. This scenario may repeat itself in Iran."
Iranian authorities have arrested scores of students suspected of
organizing anti-regime unrest. They said the arrests were supported by
Islamic vigilantes who established checkpoints and beat
suspected dissidents on the streets of Teheran.
On one occasion, pro-regime vigilantes fired weapons toward
pro-democracy demonstrators. Witnesses said the vigilantes also pulled people out of cars
and beat them.
Students also reported that dozens of members from the Basij and Ansar
Hizbullah militias attacked dormitories of two Iranian universities over the
weekend. More than 50 students Ñ beaten during their sleep on early
Saturday Ñ were injured.
"On several occasions, brutal plainclothes men were captured by the
demonstrators and tied to trees," the Iranian Student Movement Coorindation
Committee said. "The bikes of several patrols and plainclothes officers have
been destroyed as they were caught filming the demonstrators. The regime's
agents were saved from lynching by the intervention of some of the
protesters."
The student protesters have called for the resignation of Iranian
President Mohammed Khatami. First elected as a reformer in 1997, Khatami
has lost much of his support amid accusations that he quietly cooperated
with the crackdowns against freedom by security forces.
Iranian leaders have justified the crackdown by accusing the United States of fomenting student
unrest in an attempt to undermine the Islamic regime.
Homayoun said the core of the resistance is in inside Iran. The opposition to the Iranian regime has also been supported by former Iranian citizens organizing via the Internet and now living in the United States and Europe, he said.
Many of the anti-regime Farsi-language satellite broadcasts come from exiled opposition
groups based in Los Angeles, Washington and Europe.
"The continuation of enthusiastic U.S. support for the aspirations of the people of Iran is crucial at this time," said Homayoun who has offered to help form a secular democratic government in Iran. Homayoun credited a speech by President George W. Bush last year as crucial to continued growth of the reform movement in Iran.
