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Iran's powerful Muslim clerics, stung by the overwhelming 70 percent victory of reform candidates in elections ten weeks ago, are responding with a harsh crackdown on dissent, CBS News Correspondent Tom Fenton reports.

The country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has publicly given a green light for an assault on the reformist press. Other clergymen have called on their followers to kill liberal commentators.

Iranian expert Hazhir Teimourian says, "It looks to me like a coup except that it's not military so far."

The clerics have closed most of the country's liberal newspapers, and supporters of the hardliners tried to assassinate a crusading journalist.

Suspects in the shooting are now on trial, though many feel they will never be convicted. The courts, like the police and armed forces, are still in the hands of the hardliners.

Most young people, though, are still demanding change. There was a student demonstration in the capital Friday that turned violent, although so far most demonstrations have been peaceful.

Reformers fear the hardliners are just waiting for an excuse to crack down harder. Those fears are shared by the Iranian community abroad.

Professor Haleh Afshar, an Iranian exile who has received dozens of messages from friends in Iran who fear they are about to be jailed as spies, said, "what absolutely terrifies me is that there is suddenly a closing down and everybody is being accused of disloyalty to the nation."

"There's a whole lot of people who are really afraid for their lives," Afshar adds. Her advice to friends back home, at this point, is to stay calm and try not to provoke the authorities.