diff --git a/scrapy/utils/iterators.py b/scrapy/utils/iterators.py
index 021bc43db..436f89792 100644
--- a/scrapy/utils/iterators.py
+++ b/scrapy/utils/iterators.py
@@ -6,7 +6,8 @@ from scrapy import log
 from scrapy.utils.python import re_rsearch, str_to_unicode
 from scrapy.utils.response import body_or_str
 
-def xmliter(obj, nodename):
+
+def _xmliter_regex(obj, nodename):
     """Return a iterator of XPathSelector's over all nodes of a XML document,
        given tha name of the node to iterate. Useful for parsing XML feeds.
 
@@ -29,6 +30,47 @@ def xmliter(obj, nodename):
         nodetext = header_start + match.group() + header_end
         yield XmlXPathSelector(text=nodetext).select('//' + nodename)[0]
 
+
+def _xmliter_lxml(obj, nodename, encoding='utf-8'):
+    reader = _StreamReader(obj)
+    iterable = etree.iterparse(reader, tag=nodename, encoding=reader.encoding)
+    for _, node in iterable:
+        nodetext = etree.tostring(node)
+        node.clear()
+        yield XmlXPathSelector(text=nodetext).select('//' + nodename)[0]
+
+class _StreamReader(object):
+
+    def __init__(self, obj):
+        self._ptr = 0
+        if isinstance(obj, Response):
+            self._text, self.encoding = obj.body, obj.encoding
+        else:
+            self._text, self.encoding = obj, 'utf-8'
+        self._is_unicode = isinstance(self._text, unicode)
+
+    def read(self, n=65535):
+        self.read = self._read_unicode if self._is_unicode else self._read_string
+        return self.read(n).lstrip()
+
+    def _read_string(self, n=65535):
+        s, e = self._ptr, self._ptr + n
+        self._ptr = e
+        return self._text[s:e]
+
+    def _read_unicode(self, n=65535):
+        s, e = self._ptr, self._ptr + n
+        self._ptr = e
+        return self._text[s:e].encode('utf-8')
+
+
+try:
+    from lxml import etree
+    xmliter = _xmliter_lxml
+except ImportError:
+    xmliter = _xmliter_regex
+
+
 def csviter(obj, delimiter=None, headers=None, encoding=None):
     """ Returns an iterator of dictionaries from the given csv object