BEIRUT — Iran's supreme leader on Monday sternly warned government opponents to end a campaign of civil disobedience while defiant reformists provocatively proposed a nationwide referendum to resolve the ongoing dispute over the country's recent presidential election.
Meanwhile, the elite Revolutionary Guard sought to consolidate its power by moving to take control of the oil industry and calling for a change in higher education curriculum.
The moves show that neither supporters of opposition figure Mir-Hossein Mousavi nor the camp backing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is backing down five weeks after the election marred by allegations of vote fraud.
The call for a referendum is the latest in a series of challenges to the authority of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose demand that Iranians accept Ahmadinejad as president for a second term has gone unheeded.
In pointed comments aimed at the reformist camp, Khamenei warned the country's political class that "any words they utter, any action they take, any analysis they express" could help the nation's international rivals.
"It is examination day," he said. "But anyone who flunks the exam cannot retake it the next year. Failing in this exam is not flunking, it is collapse."
It was Khamenei's first public comment since a prayer sermon Friday by Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a Mousavi backer, whose words of support for key reformist demands energized the opposition. Khamenei, describing the unrest as a foreign plot, appears to be trying to silence the opposition by vowing to crack down on dissidents and by rejecting the view that the country is in a state of crisis.
But opposition figures show no sign of relenting. The rift within the establishment was highlighted again Monday by the absence of Rafsanjani, chairman of two powerful government boards, and reformist clergy from an annual Muslim holiday gathering in the capital, according to TV footage.
Meanwhile, in a meeting with families of those imprisoned in the government's postelection crackdown on protesters, Mousavi said that "intimidation and threats cannot silence" his supporters.
"A government taking shape in a climate of mistrust would be weak, and it would have to give concessions to foreigners because it lacks any popular legitimacy," he said, according to his website. "We are not afraid of costs because we should continue the path of our martyrs."
