US 'rousing' anti-govt protests in Iran

The Unites States backs the protests as a cry for freedom from a people whose government US officials accuse of being part of an "axis of evil" for allegedly developing nuclear arms, backing terrorism and trying to destabilise post-war Iraq.

Protesters in Tehran, wary of possible beatings from hardline Islamic vigilantes which marked previous nights, kept to their cars and sounded their horns in traffic jams around the city's university -- the focus of the unrest.

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The official IRNA news agency reported protests in six other cities in which scores were arrested and several injured. But numbers taking part in the demonstrations -- among the largest and most violent for four years -- appeared to be dwindling.

Iran's government and most parliamentary deputies accused the United States of blatant interference in Iran's internal affairs. Hardline clerics say they have detected a US-inspired plot to destabilise Iran.

But demonstrators said they were not on the streets for the sake of Washington.

IRNA said at least 90 people had been arrested in the past two days in the northwestern city of Tabriz where riot police surrounded the university there.

Analysts predict that with most student leaders in jail or having fled the country after campus protests in 1999 and 2002, the unrest was likely to fizzle out.

While Khatami has remained silent on the protests, his younger brother, deputy parliamentary speaker Mohammad Reza Khatami, said Iran should not use Washington as a scapegoat for the unrest.

"America or any other power does not have the ability to disturb order in our society," he told the Iran newspaper. "There is discontent in Iranian society and we have turned a blind eye to it," he added.

Uniformed police once more guarded Tehran University keeping hardline militiamen and the students inside apart and preventing any repeat of Friday night's clashes in which the Islamic militants fired shots and beat protesters with clubs and chains.