Iran Blames Paramilitaries for Attacks on Student Protesters

TEHRAN, June 14 — Chanting students and heavily armed vigilantes remained in a tense standoff around the main student dormitories of Tehran University tonight after the government unexpectedly put the blame for five nights of escalating clashes on shadowy paramilitary forces that have long been the favored means of squelching dissent here.

Reports emerging today indicated for the first time that the protests had spread beyond Tehran, with one protester reportedly killed in the southern city of Shiraz, and a dormitory at the Industrial University of Isfahan heavily damaged by fire.

"This is a student movement, not an American movement," some 500 students chanted outside the Tehran University dormitories, according to the Iranian Student News Agency. They were evidently answering accusations made by senior clerics that the demonstrators were stooges aiding an American plot to destabilize the Islamic Republic.

The ISNA report said that at least 50 vigilantes on motorbikes were circling the area yelling "Hezbollah! Hezbollah!" and darting through the heavy traffic to detain anyone who looked suspicious to them.

There has been no official announcement about the exact number of wounded or arrested in the clashes, but students and other witnesses said about 70 people were wounded in Tehran over the last four nights, some of them critically.

Students were wary about the presence of the vigilantes even after the nightly news on the main government-run television station announced that arrest warrants had been issued for 100 men believed responsible for fomenting bloodshed. They were described as followers of Said Asgar, also sought, who was freed after a brief jail sentence for the attempted murder of one of the country's leading reformers in 2000.

The sudden placing of blame on the much feared vigilantes — known as baseejis or Ansar Hezbollah and believed controlled by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader — came as a surprise. Student Web sites carried a statement from Ansar Hezbollah saying it was not responsible for the current attacks.

If carried out, the arrest of any such men would be a remarkable event. Although their command structure is obscure, the vigilantes have often been used as shock troops to instill fear in anyone threatening the government through civil disobedience. Students who detained half a dozen of the vigilantes attacking them on Friday night said they were carrying identification cards from the intelligence service of the Republican Guards.

On Thursday, Ayatollah Khamenei accused the United States of fomenting the protests and, although calling on the vigilantes not to intervene, chillingly warned that if the protests continued, they might end as similar disturbances did in 1999.

The vigilantes attacked the same Tehran University dorms that year, tossing students out third-story windows and vandalizing the buildings. One student was killed with a gunshot, several were brutally injured, and a few remain in prison. The current protests could well continue at one level or another until the July anniversary of those attacks.

Students said they remained fearful of a repeat of the ferocious assaults, which the regular security forces, although surrounding them, appeared powerless to prevent.

"We are all very scared," said a 21-year-old student reached by telephone who would identify himself only as Amir. "The regular security forces had entered the dormitories to protect us, but they only had a few batons, and they said they were not going to hang around tonight."

The vigilantes, on the other hand, swarmed onto campus in the early hours today by the hundreds, armed with truncheons, heavy sticks, chains and even a few sidearms, he said.

Details of attacks on the dorms at three universities in Tehran and others in Isfahan and Shiraz emerged slowly today. Pictures on student Web sites showed blood-smeared walls and doorways that had been smashed at Tehran University.

There were few details about the death in Shiraz, reported by the Web site of Amir Kabeer University, other than that the victim was a male shot in the chest who died later in a hospital. There were pictures of students with gruesome wounds that appeared to have been caused by razors or other sharp objects.

Given recent statements by the Bush administration calling for change in Iran, the protests have increased the concerns of an already jittery government. The fact that Farsi-language satellite broadcasts from the United States, run mostly by monarchist opposition groups, have been urging people onto the streets only added to their concerns.

But students and other protesters have shown themselves fed up with all sides. "We want no shah, we want no supreme leader," went one chant.

Experts said that the level of violence unleashed by the vigilantes would probably dampen the protests, but that growing anger about the slow pace of change in a country with 48 million people under the age of 30 — 70 percent of the population — would only fester.

"They really scared people last night," said Mohsen Sazegara, an opposition journalist. "But it will gradually push people to become more radical. People are unhappy and very angry, so whenever there is an opportunity, they want to express this anger."

The anger has not been reserved only for the conservative religious establishment around Ayatollah Khamenei, blamed for slowing the pace of greater democracy as well as of social and economic freedom.

Reformists have been calling for a referendum on constitutional change that would shift power away from the supreme leader, but have gotten nowhere. There was no orchestrated demand for that in the current protests, which mushroomed out of a small march last Tuesday against the privatization of universities.

Students, who voted heavily for the reformist president, Mohammed Khatami, have also expressed anger at his inability to deliver greater change. They have been especially angered by his silence in the face of the protests this week and for the first time chanted against him.

The Ministry of Information barred local and foreign reporters from covering the protests tonight, saying it could not assure their safety after a number had been beaten.