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A large crowd of young people in the western city of Khorram-Abad turned the traditional Shiite mourning, Ashura, into a huge antigovernment demonstration on Friday, April 14.
The authorities sent in contingents of special anti-riot Guards units to deal with the demonstrators. In the clashes, which continued for several hours, at least two people were killed and 40 wounded.
The Revolutionary Guards arrested dozens of young demonstrators.
At about 11 am on Sunday, April 16, several thousand people in Hadi Shahr, a suburb of Tabriz, capital of the East Azerbaijani Province, turned the Ashura procession into a major antigovernment uprising.
Clashes between the people and the State Security Forces who were savagely beating the protesters with truncheons lasted for 12 hours. Dozens of residents were arrested and a large number of them seriously injured.
In Mehriz (Fars Province), young people threw fire bombs at a gathering of terrorist thugs known as Ansar-e Hezbollah, setting it ablaze.
In Tehran's Lavasani Street, three
teenagers attacked a commander of the paramilitary Bassij force, Hamid-Reza
Rafi'i, and seriously wounded him.
Young Protesters Arrested in Violent Clashes, Agence France Presse, April 17
TEHRAN - Fifty young people were arrested in the northern city of Rasht during three days of violent clashes with the Islamic militia and the police, the police said Monday.
Uneasy calm was restored to the city by Monday as police officials and representatives of Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, began investigating the cause of the incidents.
The young people, all under 25 years of age, were arrested for their participation in the incidents which occurred during the Shiite mourning period of Tassua and Ashura, on Friday and Saturday, police sources told AFP.
"Several baton-wielding Basiji arrived on motorcycles. They began to beat up young men whom they accused of trying to pick up girls," an eyewitness told AFP.
According to state radio, the "fashionable attire" worn by one girl did not conform to the strict Islamic dress code for women triggering the intervention of the volunteer militia.
At that moment, "several young people began chanting slogans against Ayatollah Khamanei."
The incidents have sparked a confrontation between a high ranking official of the Gilan provincial security forces and the representative of the supreme leader Sadegh Ehsan-Bakhsh.
Ali Bagheri, Gilan's deputy political and security chief charged Monday that the "religious police" -- the Islamic militia -- were responsible for the incident. Ehsan-Bakhsh rejected this accusation.
He accused "the reformist press" and
recommended that Mohammad Khatami "distance himself from them, although
it is too late to repair the damage that has been done."
Revolutionary Guards Give Ominous Warning to Khatami Faction, Agence France Presse, April 15
TEHRAN - Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards issued a stern warning Sunday to the increasingly vocal pro-reform press, darkly hinting there was a severe "blow" on the way from the forces of the Islamic revolution.
The Guards, a pillar of the Islamic regime under the direct control of supreme leader Ali Khamenei, issued a statement cited by state radio castigating the reformist press which backs Mohammad Khatami.
"When the time comes, these people will feel a blow to the head delivered by the revolution," they said, amid a renewed crackdown by the conservative-led courts and police on reformist newspapers.
They accused papers of writing articles "along the lines of foreign demands" and "attacking the values of the revolution."
They also denounced defenders of "US-style" reforms in Iran, referring to the growing number of reformist politicians who have advocated re-opening dialogue with the arch-enemy United States.
The strong warning from the Guards comes following accusations in the pro-reform press that a murderous "shadow government" actually controls the levers of power in the Islamic republic.
The Guards called on all political forces to "support the government, the judiciary, the parliament and all of the regime's institutions in conformity with the law and under the direction of the supreme leader."
On Friday, Khamenei defended "legal violence" as a means of keeping order in the Islamic republic and insisted that Iran would not move away from the values of the 1979 Islamic revolution.