Crackdown in Iran...

Let's hope this is a sign of how much the regime is hated...

IRANIAN authorities have begun a crackdown on dissent, zeroing in on labour leaders, universities, the press, women's rights advocates and Iranian-Americans.

The New York Times said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's administration had been using US support for regime change in Iran and threats of a military attack as a pretext to hound opponents.

Some analysts say the crackdown is a cultural revolution, an attempt to roll back the clock to the time of the 1979 revolution.

Attention has been focused on Mr Ahmadinejad's political enemies, like former president Mohammad Khatami and the controversy over his presumed violation of Islamic morals when he shook hands with an unfamiliar woman after a speech in Rome, the paper said.

Young men wearing T-shirts deemed too tight or haircuts seen as too Western have been paraded bleeding through Tehran streets by uniformed police, the Times said.

The police chief boasted that 150,000 people were detained in an annual sweep against clothing thought unIslamic, according to the report. And eight student leaders at Tehran's Amir Kabir University disappeared into jail from early May.

The Iranian National Security Council has sent a three-page warning to all newspaper editors detailing banned topics, including the rise in petrol prices or other economic woes.

At least three prominent groups pushing for broader legal rights or civil society have been shut down and hundreds more forced underground. And professors have been warned against attending overseas conferences or contacts with foreign governments, lest they be recruited as spies, the Times said.