TEHRAN, Nov 12: Student protests sparked by the sentencing to death of a reformist academic took on a wider political dimension on Tuesday, despite a warning from Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to intervene with “popular force”.

At least 3,000 students gathered at Tehran’s university campus chanting slogans including “death to despotism”, on the fourth day of protests sparked by the sentencing to death for blasphemy of Hashem Aghajari, who had questioned the conservatives’ right to rule.

Demonstrators set a more overtly political tone, with some students chanting: “Death to the Taliban, in Kabul and Tehran”, “the student movement is ready to revolt” and slogans lambasting the head of the hardline judiciary and powerful former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Police prevented students from moving outside the main Tehran campus and onto the streets, and the demonstrators later dispersed calmly as drizzle set in.

Crowd numbers have swelled from a few hundred on Saturday to more than 3,000 Tuesday.

Aghajari’s leftist group, the Organisation of Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution (OMIR), called for protests to continue but also urged calm.

“Everyone must keep their calm but also their determination. If there are any excesses, we will pay the price,” warned Behzad Nabavi, deputy speaker of parliament and leading member of OMIR.

“But that does not mean you should stay at home,” he said at a press conference.

Protests and student strikes have also been reported in other provincial universities, including Isfahan, Tabriz and Kerman.

Late on Monday, the all-powerful Khamenei said he may resort to “popular force” to end the mounting political crisis, which runs far deeper than Aghajari’s sentence.

“The day when the three branches of government are unable to settle major problems, the supreme guide will, if he deems it necessary, make popular force intervene,” Khamenei said.

“I hope that will never happen.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the Basij and other hardline militias are frequently referred to as “popular forces”, and when called upon can easily smash pro-reform protests.

An Iranian analyst, who asked not to be named, said the warning was a reminder of a 1999 clampdown on massive student protests over newspaper closures that officially left one dead, dozens injured and even more students thrown in jail.

The Aghajari crisis comes amid a hardening of positions on both sides, with some reformers even threatening to walk out of the Islamic regime.

The reformers — who control the legislative and the executive — are trying to push through a challenge to the power of conservatives who control the courts, legislative watchdog bodies and much of the economy.

But the last-ditch twin-bill initiative — which would strip unelected hardliners of their right to veto candidates for public office and allow Khatami to annul court rulings — is prey to veto by the same watchdog bodies which have binned much of the rest of Khatami’s initiatives.

And Khamenei, the successor of the regime’s founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, said he had “advised” Khatami to instead “compensate for the shortcomings” of his government.

“Officials must not get involved in political games and insignificant affairs,” Khamenei said, warning that the Islamic republic’s “enemies are seeking to take advantage of the gaps to deal a blow to Islamic Iran”.

But Khamenei also warned the judiciary, which is under fire for its sentencing to death last week of reformist intellectual Hashem Aghajari, a disabled veteran of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

The supreme leader urged judges to “pay attention to the general behaviour of the judicial apparatus” to avoid leaving themselves open to criticism.

Few expect Aghjari’s death sentence will be carried out, given that a number of prominent conservatives and at least one campus Basij group has also condemned the verdict.

Also Tuesday, Khatami held a meeting with university chiefs, but steered clear of commenting on the crisis and restricted his comments to a discourse on science and civilisation.

However IRNA did quote the mild-mannered president as saying that “in a society in crisis, there can be neither science nor progress.”—AFP