They wouldn't be allowed to perform in Iran, but singers Joan Baez and Jon Bon Jovi are showing their support for protesters.

In videos carried on YouTube, the artistes perform songs - with a few lines in Farsi - that call for peace.

Bon Jovi sings Stand By Me alongside Armenian-Iranian pop star Andy Madadian. The New Jersey rocker adds, in surprisingly good Farsi, the line: "Hand in hand, with one voice, you and me, countryman, your pain, my pain, be with me."

Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora provides the licks in the June 24-dated video, which opens with an image of Bon Jovi holding a sign that reads "We are all one" in Farsi.

A comment posted to Bon Jovi's website Saturday thanked him for the performance, adding hopes that Bon Jovi would "be the first legendary American singer who will perform in Iran ... one day in the near future."

Civil rights anthem

Folk singer and activist Joan Baez's version of We Shall Overcome includes a portion in Farsi. Strumming an acoustic guitar in what appears to be a kitchen, the 68-year-old singer trills the song made famous as an anthem of the American civil-rights movement.

Other musicians are the soundtrack for videos and slideshows protesting alleged fraud in the June 12 election whose result gave a landslide victory to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

One collection of photos is set to the late pop star Michael Jackson's Beat It - with the song's key lyrics appearing in red over images of Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Politically charged rock band Rage Against the Machine serves as the soundtrack for another such video that splices protest photos with video from the pre-election debate in which Ahmadinejad holds up the intelligence file of the wife of rival candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.