Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appealed Friday for unity among the Islamic republic's rival political camps, but denounced a wave of university protests sparked by the sentencing to death of a pro-reform academic.
"The people need unity and efforts by all to develop the country, notably through research at universities and the struggle against corruption," the all-powerful leader said in a sermon delivered to hundreds of thousands of faithful gathered for Friday prayers.
"While the country needs the young students and the universities to concentrate on science and research, suddenly a group finds a pretext and tries to prevent the university students and researchers from carrying out their normal work," Khamenei said.
Khamenei's sermon was the first time he has spoken publicly over mounting student protests that followed the sentencing to death for blasphemy of Hashem Aghajari.
"This action will lead nowhere," Khamenei said in the sermon, carried live by state media.
At least 10,000 people were packed into the hall where Khamenei was speaking, while 200,000 more listened on loudspeakers in the streets outside.
State television carried images of the throbbing crowd taken from a helicopter.
In a clear reference to the pro-Aghajari protests, Khamenei asked "are these actions not the work of the enemy?
"Those behind these disruptions carry a great responsibility," warned Khamenei, successor to Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the final word on all matters of state.
Aghajari, a disabled veteran of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and ally of reformist President Mohammad Khatami, was put on death row November 6 after his questioning of the Shiite clergy's right to rule was deemed to be blasphemous.
Student supporters of the dissident have been staging almost daily protest rallies across the country since November 9. But the protests, which have drawn up to 5,000 people in Tehran, have been taking on wider political overtures with activists making vocal demands for greater freedom of speech.
Aghajari's sentence came amid increased political bickering. Reformists, who control the presidency and the parliament, are pitted against hardliners, who control the courts, security forces and powerful legislative oversight bodies and have consistently blocked Khatami's reforms since he was first elected in 1997.
The student demonstrations, which have been marked by sporadic clashes between hardline vigilantes and pro-reform students, have raised fears of a repeat of events in July 1999, when similar rallies degenerated into several days of bloody street clashes.
The 1999 protests were put down by security forces backed by hardline militia groups.
Khamenei alluded to this violence in his sermon.
"Three years ago, corrupt people did the same thing with the students, and in this same university and elsewhere in Tehran they tried to provoke the students by spreading false rumours," the supreme leader said.
"But the people, with calm and force, showed their strength on the ground," he said. However, he did add that the "enemies of the revolution" should not be given "pretexts".
Last week, Khamenei ordered the judiciary to revise the Aghajari sentence, following the protests and complaints from both prominent reformists and conservatives.
Reformist leaders have also called on the students to ease their protests.
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