Ruling clerical authorities decided to ban the satellite dishes after nation-wide unrests that followed Iranian national soccer team playing against Arab rivals, namely Iraq, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates counting for the prestigious World Cup 2002, regardless of the team’s victory or defeat.

Football funs, mostly young ones of both sexes, but also ordinary people used the occasions to engage Law Enforcement Forces in street pitched battles, attacking state owned properties like banks and public administrations, setting fire on buses, breaking shops and building windows and traffic lights and above all, chanting nationalist song and slogans against the Islamic Republic and Ayatollah Khameneh’I, comparing him to former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot or the Iraqi President Saddam Hosseyn.

Authorities, while maintaining an uneasy silence and imposing a news black out on the already muzzled press, acknowledged that more than 2000 demonstrators that they label as "hooligans", "trouble-makers" or counter-revolutionaries have been detained.

They also acknowledged that the violence was widespread, touching several major and smaller cities.

The general public, feeling badly humiliated at the "unimaginable" defeat, put it on the ruling clerics whom, according to a widely believed and accepted rumours, had coerced the players to "give" the game to the Bahrainis in order to avoid wild disturbances that had followed several days before after the 2 to 1 victory of Iran over Iraq.

"During the incidents it was clear that two TV networks that are run by the anti-revolutionary elements in America incited young people to go into action. They have misused young people's emotions", said Hojjatoleslam Ali Mobbasheri, the hard-line Head of the Islamic Revolution Court.

Although officials rejected as totally "baseless" the accusations, yet all football commentators agreed that the Iranian footballists were demoralised, stressed, inspirited and angry, offering a very low-level play and accumulating faults.

"Bankrupt elements abroad are trying to use the satellite network to launch a political challenge. This shows that we have failed to seriously confront cultural threats", Defence Minister Admiral Ali Shamkhani said.

Following the decision to ban dishes, a police spokesman said hundreds of dishes had been removed from homes in the capital Tehran since Tuesday as part of a campaign against "social vice".

"We have a law against the use of satellite dishes and the police is duty-bound to implement it", the police spokesman said, putting the number of households equipped with satellite antennas at over 150.000.

"First, we will serve them a written notice. If they do not hand them over, they will be arrested and fined to up 300.000 toomans (4.800 US Dollars on the black market rate", he warned, adding that so far more than 1000 dishes had been handed over to the authorities.

While pro-reform newspapers reminded that the ban would face the same fate as that imposed on video-recorders many years ago, conservatives-controlled press called for tougher measures.

Mr. Mobbasheri warned that he would show "no mercy" to the instigators of the riots, saying that "trouble--makers and counter-revolutionaries would be dealt with according to laws".

"The Revolutionary Court, according to the law and its responsibilities, would have no mercy on those savage gangs who wanted to create insecurity with their hooliganism and improper behaviour" he was quoted as saying by "Resalat" newspaper that reflects the views of the Bazaar oligarchy and hard-line islamists.

"The main instigators were identified. Those who are causing insecurity will be considered as mohareb (those who fight God)," he said, a charge which can carry the death penalty.