ISTANBUL, June 13 -- Clashes between students and security forces in Tehran appear to be the most significant civic protests inside Iran for in almost five years, analysts and witnesses say, but it was far from clear this morning whether the unrest would extend to the general population.
Authorities made a huge show of force at Tehran University Thursday night, busing in hundreds of riot police to deter students from mounting a third night of protests. Witnesses said students gathered in a dormitory for hours after dark weighing whether to risk clashes with police and the basij militia who serve as street enforcers for the conservatives.
Shortly after midnight, neighbors heard chants of "Ansar get lost," a taunt directed at the militia known as Ansar Hezbollah. The students remained behind the fence surrounding the dorm, however, while police ordered curious civilians back into their homes, witnesses said.
A handful of residents who joined in slogans against the Guardian Council, a seat of clerical power in government, were threatened with arrest or beating, witnesses said.
The standoff illustrated what analysts called the high stakes of public confrontation in an atmosphere that has been supercharged by the Bush administration's criticism of Iran. The administration has made public appeals for Iranians to cast off the conservative clerical government President Bush includes in the "axis of evil."
"The students are determined to continue the protests and the establishment here is equally -- if not more -- determined to stop it," said Shirzad Bozorgnehr, editor of Iran News, an English-language daily in Tehran.
The protests were driven by an estimated 3,000 students who for two nights chanted slogans against both factions vying for power in Iran -- the conservative clerics who dominate Iran's theocracy and the elected reformers whose failure to loosen the conservatives' grips on power have frustrated the large majority of Iranians who support reform.
On the first two nights, visible public support was largely limited to honking horns on nearby streets and leaving open the doors to residential compounds as escape routes for students pursued by hard-line thugs and uniformed riot police, according to witnesses.
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