Free Republic

Students and a number of Tehrani clashed late Tuesday night with Law Enforcement Forces (LEF) backed by plainclothes men from pressure groups at Tehran University dormitory and neighbouring areas, leaving an undisclosed number of wounded, according to eyewitnesses. The clashes occurred after some 1.000 to 2.000 students protested to plans aiming at privatising universities, according to the independent students news agency ISNA. "LEF and thugs charged the students with chains, electric cable and clubs, after slogans saying death to Khameneh'i, death to Rafsanjani were chanted", one eyewitness told Iran Press Service, adding that hundreds of ordinary people had joined the...

<p>Taha Mahmud remembers thinking he was going to die. He was thrashing through knee-deep mountain snow toward his last hope of safety, the Iranian border.</p> <p>High overhead in Iraq’s sky, U.S. warplanes homed in on him and nearly 120 other Islamic radicals belonging to the Qaeda-linked Kurdish group Ansar Al-Islam. American bombs and missiles had already obliterated Ansar’s stronghold in the valley below. While Mahmud wondered whether to risk being shot by Iranian border guards, a pair of American bombs solved his dilemma. Two thunderous explosions sent him staggering into Iran, his path traced by blood from his shredded left knee. “Only Allah saved me,” Mahmud says.</p>