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[url="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,89194,00.html/"]Fox News Website[/url]
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's supreme leader raised the possibility of a harsh crackdown Thursday after two days of pro-reform demonstrations during which hundreds of increasingly bold young people have gone so far as to call for his death.
The last two days have seen the largest demonstrations against Iran's political leadership in six months. Among the youth in particular, frustration with the regime has grown stronger than fear of arrest or of the hard-liners' well-established reputation for brutality.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (search), in a speech broadcast on state television and radio Thursday, referred to violence in 1999, when vigilantes and security forces attacked students protesting media restrictions, killing at least one student and touching off the worst street battles since the 1979 revolution that ousted the U.S.-backed shah.
"If the Iranian nation decides to deal with the [current] rioters, it will do so in the way it dealt with it on July 14, 1999," Khamenei said.
On Wednesday, dozens of hard-line vigilantes on motorbikes chased about 300 mostly teenage protesters, beating them with sticks in the streets outside a Tehran University (search) dormitory in the city's Amirabad district. Several people were seen being carried away with head injuries.
Around 200 students in the dormitory compound threw stones and Molotov cocktails at anti-riot police after they joined the vigilantes attacking the protesters.
The protesters chanted "Death to Khamenei" and threw stones at anti-riot police, who tossed them back.
Authorities had condemned the attack on the dormitory but blamed the riots on opposition groups. Khamenei took a similar line Thursday, saying that if vigilantes stepped in, "wherever they see riots," they would be blamed for the violence.
"It should not be allowed that a group of people contaminate society and universities with riots and insecurity, and then attribute it to the pious youth," Khamenei said.
Tehran state radio originally misquoted Khamenei as blatantly urging vigilantes to intervene. Later state television and radio broadcast the full speech.
There was no sign of further protests at the university hostels at midday Thursday. Students tend to protest in the evenings during summer.
Exiled opposition groups are seizing the opportunity created by restless Iranian youth, encouraging dissent through avenues like Los Angeles-based Persian TV channels.
U.S. pressure on Iran, which Washington accuses of hiding a nuclear weapons program and harboring terrorists, may have further emboldened those who hope to see the regime toppled.
In Iran, criticism of Khamenei is punished by jail and is rarely heard in public.
The protests had begun peacefully Tuesday when a small student gathering against privatization of universities turned into the largest demonstration against Iran's political leadership since November.
Then, students protested a death sentence imposed on Hashem Aghajari, a history professor at a Tehran teachers' college, who questioned the need to obey the Islamic clerics' every edict.
About 80 protesters had been arrested for chanting slogans against the leadership and for participating in unauthorized demonstrations after a small student gathering Tuesday night against privatizing universities grew into an anti-regime demonstration.
"The clerical regime is nearing its end," demonstrators chanted. "Vigilantes commit crimes, the leader supports them."
Demonstrators also called for the resignation of President Mohammad Khatami (search), a popularly elected reformist, accusing him of not pushing hard enough for change. Khatami doesn't have the power of unelected hard-liners who control the judiciary and the security forces. But the hard-liners don't have popular support, leaving Iran at a stalemate.
"Retreat, hell! We just got here!"-Captain Lloyd Williams, 2nd Marine Division, Belleau Wood, France, WWI
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