Students across Iran boycott classes as reformers and mullahs set for collision

Thousands of students demonstrated across Iran yesterday, demanding an end to the forced closure of most of the country's free press and insisting they would never allow the reforms of President Mohammad Khatami to be defeated.

Mr Khatami's youth army was out in force. Universities came to a standstill in every corner of the Islamic Republic as students boycotted classes for the second day running and held peaceful demonstrations inside campuses. "We want freedom," chanted students at Tehran's University of Science and Technology. "The university is the barricade for Khatami." But even as they gathered, the hardline press court warned the President's brother, Mohammad Reza Khatami, that his newspaper, Mosharekat - one of the last pro-reform voices still being published - could be next to be banned.

Mr Khatami is overwhelmingly popular in Iran, but he has two key areas of active support: the free press he largely created, and the students who are the reform movement's foot soldiers, many of them ready to back him with their lives. The hardliners have, temporarily at least, silenced most of the reformist press. The fear is that they will now turn their attention to the students.

Every time the hardliners have tried to undermine Mr Khatami's programme of reform, the students have taken to the streets to back him. They were said to be already producing unlicensed "night letters" to keep people informed if all reformist papers are closed. They have never let the president down - but this time their support could do him more harm than good.

"We will start with small-scale protests like this," said a student leader in Tehran. "If we don't get positive answers, we will hold larger protests and close down classes for longer periods." But leaders of the reform movement are afraid of what that might bring, and have been warning the students to show restraint. Iran is on a knife-edge. One false move from the campuses and Tehran could erupt in violence, as it did last July when police and hardline vigilantes attacked student dormitories after peaceful demonstrations against the closure of a single reformist newspaper,. They killed at least one student, and left a trail of blood behind them.

This time, there are only two pro-reform dailies still in print, after hardliners forced the closure of 13 newspapers and journals. But if the students give the hardliners an excuse for violence, it could be used to undermine the reformers' landslide victory in February's elections. "The hard-liners are trying to create a crisis to use that as a pretext for an even larger crackdown," said Karim Arqandehpour, of Mosharekat.

"The people should remain calm, because the reforms are not in a life-or-death situation. They are now embedded in the hearts of the Iranian people, and cannot be choked."

But every time the hardliners are able to attack the reformers public confidence in Mr Khatami is undermined. When newspaper editors are jailed or students are gunned down, the implication is that the president cannot protect his supporters.

Nobody is quite sure how far the mullahs are prepared to go. They have lost control of parliament, as they lost the hearts of their people some time ago. But they are not ready to lose control of the country they have ruled since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Already, the hardline Guardian Council has annulled several reformers' victories in the elections on grounds of "irregularities," and it is challenging the results in the all-important Tehran constituency, where Mr Reza Khatami won by far the most votes in Tehran in February. He has emerged as a leader of the reformers in parliament.

The council has been dragging its heels over setting a date for run-offs in 52 constituencies where there was no clear result. Yesterday it finally set the date as 5 May.

But violence could be an excuse to delay the opening of the new reformer-dominated parliament, or even to wrest powers away from the president to deal with an emergency. The word "coup" has cropped up more than once in the last few days, and the Revolutionary Guards, the more hardline of Iran's two armies, have officially denied they are plotting one. But there are no signs that things will go that far - yet.

Meanwhile, the onslaught on reformers looks more like an Inquisition than ever. On Tuesday an arrest warrant was issued for Hassan Eshkevari, an ultraliberal mullah, for acting against state interests at a recent Berlin conference on the reform movement when he called Islamic rule a "failure".