By ELAINE SCIOLINO

July 13, 1999

New York Times

TEHERAN, Iran -- The most widespread and sustained protests

since Iran's revolution two decades ago spread throughout the

country Monday, while security police and their vigilante supporters

moved to crush pro-democracy student demonstrators outside Teheran

University.

Students demonstrated in 18 cities and towns, including major

cosmopolitan cities like Tabriz, Shiraz and Isfahan and more traditional

cities like Mashad and Yazd, Iran's official news agency reported.

Wielding batons and lobbing tear gas canisters, the security forces

emptied Teheran University Monday evening in a campaign to crush the

demonstrations. In Teheran, students who had gathered inside the gates

of the sprawling university complex in the heart of the capital fainted from

tear gas that could be smelled more than a mile away.

"Filthy swine! Filthy swine!" one red-faced student screamed over and

over from inside the cramped quarters of one of the caged-in vehicles.

"Jerk!" yelled another. Others yelled obscenities that are seldom heard in

public in Iran.

One woman, wrapped in the all-encompassing black chador, cursed the

clergy with obscenities. A number of people were injured and received

assistance from health personnel in a blood transfusion truck and

passersby.

Dozens of injured students were taken to the campus mosque for

treatment, and a parade of ambulances streamed in and out of the

campus as a voice on a loudspeaker called all medical students to help.

Students set a huge bonfire to try to neutralize the tear gas, one witness

said.

The vigilantes, fervent revolutionaries who serve as volunteers for the

regime, carried cables, chains and batons as they emerged from the

government-owned buses that parked near the university, the witness

said. The students had intended to stage an all-night sit-in, but by

midnight, most of them had left the campus.

The demonstrations -- and the crackdown -- reflect a deep struggle over

the course of Iran's revolution. Students are impatient with the slow pace

of reforms promised by President Mohammed Khatami. The students are

not calling for a change in the Islamic system of government, rather for a

quickening of the movement towards democracy and the rule of law.

On the other side are the diehard Islamic revolutionaries, some of them in

positions of power, some of them veterans of Iran's long war with Iraq,

who take their lead from Iran's Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,

and believe that the country's moves towards democracy are a betrayal

of revolutionary purism.

Khatami does not control the police and security forces, who have

enraged and frightened many Iranians by a campaign of intimidation that

included the murders of prominent intellectuals as well as political attacks

on Khatami's allies in the government.

The demonstrations and the crackdowns do not mean that Iran's Islamic

Republic is in jeopardy. "We should not assume that this movement could

turn into a revolution," said an editorial Monday in the reformist

newspaper, Neshat. "It's neither nor possible nor desirable."

The five days of rage were sparked by the passage by Iran's parliament

of a tough new press law and by the closure of Salam, a popular

left-leaning Islamic newspaper.

Security forces and vigilantes stormed a dormitory at Teheran University

on Thursday night and beat students as they slept, pushing some from

second- and third-story windows. Although the official death toll stood at

two, Iran's newspapers, quoting students, claimed that between five and

eight students had died.

As striking as the extent of the protests throughout the country is the form

they are taking. Until now, criticisms of Ayatollah Khamenei, who is in

charge of the armed forces, the security and intelligence apparatus, and

radio and television, were made privately. Now the criticism of

Khamenei, who lacks the religious credentials of his predecessor, the

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and has resisted any embrace of reform,

has burst into the open.

In an effort to calm the highly charged atmosphere, Khamenei on

Monday delivered an emotional speech condemning the attack by

security forces on a dormitory last week after the first protests. He spoke

to a hand-picked crowd of thousands in a cavernous hall reserved solely

for his use.

"This bitter incident has broken my heart," he said in the speech, which

was broadcast on both radio and television. He added that it was

un-Islamic to enter the private spaces of individuals.

In a stunning acknowledgment that some of the demonstrators had turned

against him, he added, "Even if things make you angry and they condemn

me, even if they set fire to my picture, remain silent. Take no action until

the day that the country needs it!"

Men and women in the crowd moaned and wept loudly.

In his speech he said, "The greatest dream and honor for me is that I give

my life in this honorable, glorious magnificent path" -- a statement the

security forces and the vigilantes may have interpreted as a message that

they should risk their lives instead.

Khamenei also blamed "enemies," including the United States, for the

attack on the dormitory. Over and over, the crowd chanted "Death to America."

But at the university, there was no crying for the ayatollah. When a

speaker tried to read the text of Khamenei's speech, the crowd booed.

"Commander-in-chief resign!" and "Down with the dictator," they chanted.

There were posters of President Khatami but none of Ayatollah

Khamenei, whose photographs and portraits dominate public buildings,

shops and landscapes throughout Iran along with those of his predecessor.

Khatami called on students to exercise restraint, saying in a meeting with

education officials, "students should cooperate with the government and

allow law and order to be established in society."

In another incident Monday, uniformed and plainclothes security police

and anti-riot police protected by shields and helmets clashed with several

hundred student protesters. The police rounded up dozens of students in

Valiasr Square, one of Teheran's busiest intersections, beating some of

them and forcing them into cages mounted on the back of pickup trucks.

The crackdown came after a police car and two police motorcycles were

set on fire, apparently by students, one witness said.

Stone-throwing students smashed storefront windows. Many

shopkeepers pulled down the gates of their stores both to prevent looting

and to get a closer look at the action in the streets. Police froze traffic just

before rush hour. Helicopters kept watch overhead. Security police

roamed among the thousands of people gathered in the square arresting

suspicious-looking young people and rounding up photographers to

prevent them from taking pictures.

Throughout the day at the university, students stood up on a makeshift

dais near the law school and one after one explained their views and

stated their demands. Among them are the creation of a national day of

mourning in memory of the students who were killed, the holding of a

public trial for the people who ordered and carried out the dormitory

attack, and the return of the bodies of those killed.

One speaker in a black shirt criticized the lack of organization. "We have

to have a plan and a leader," said the man, who, like the other speakers,

did not identify himself. "We have to find out which of our friends have

been killed, and who they are."

Another speaker called for the execution of the perpetrators of last

Thursday's dormitory attack.

A number of student organizers said they believed that the all-day open

microphone was a trap set by infiltrators in their midst who both tried to

provoke the students into more radical action and ended up being part of

Monday night's crackdown. One speaker said that some in the crowd

were offering razor blades to students who might want to use violence.

"It was very strange that the students were allowed to speak so freely,"

he said. "The whole thing is too suspicious."