Around 1,000 protestors gathered in front of the embassy after what was the biggest demonstration so far in Iran against the assault on neighbouring Iraq.

They overturned an empty guard post at the entrance, burned British flags and said they would tear down the flag flying on the building, but they were kept away from the embassy by Iranian riot police.

The demonstrators were among tens of thousands who had marched at the call of the Islamic Republic's authorities after Friday prayers, where in one mosque they were fired up by senior cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, who called US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair "war criminals."

They converged on Revolution Square shouting "Death to America," "Death to Israel" and the less commonly heard slogan "Death to Britain."

Bush, Blair and Israel's Ariel Sharon were also vituperated, but also occasionally was Iraq's President Saddam Hussein, who fought a vicious and bloody war with Iran from 1980 to 1988.

"Saddam is a criminal and even up to this day our soldiers exposed to his chemical weapons are dying," said one of the demonstrators, who included many veterans of the war or relatives of the hundreds of thousands of "martyrs" who died in it.

Iran tends to blame Saddam for inviting the US and British invasion of his country, but it is also on Bush's "axis of evil" along with Iraq and North Korea.

The Islamic Republic has professed neutrality in the current conflict, but Iranians are keeping a close eye on the war between their two greatest enemies.

"The revolutionary and Muslim people of Iran, despite their opposition to the Baath regime (of Saddam Hussein) cannot remain indifferent to the savage massacre of our Muslim neighbours," a government statement said, calling on Iranians to take to the streets after Friday prayers to protest the war.

Demonstrators carried placards showing Iraq carpeted by US bombs and coffins wrapped in the US flag with captions denouncing "Bush the criminal" and his "democratic rule by missile strikes".

Iranian leaders are also worried by the precedent the US-led campaign on Iraq might set and have repeatedly called on the United Nations to resolve the crisis.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has denounced what he calls the new American "Hitlerism."

Tehran is concerned at seeing the country that it has often called the Great Satan establishing a military presence in yet another of its neighbours.

It considers a military campaign against Iran unlikely, but is certain that American political, economic and economic pressure will be ratcheted up if and when US forces topple Saddam.

Leyla, a 22-year old student, said it is "very likely that the US will attack Iran," once it finishes its war on Iraq. She said that she had come to "vent her hate against the United State."

WAR.WIRE