These were the largest demonstrations since 1999, when campus protests demanding greater freedom of speech were attacked by police and extralegal gangs, resulting in the death in Tehran of one youth, a soldier from a peasant family.

As protests swelled in support of Aghajari, the professor refused to appeal his sentence, putting the courts even more on the spot. Subsequently, Iran’s clerical head of state, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a statement asking the judiciary to review the verdict, implying that the death sentence should be rescinded. Students and other opponents of the death sentence saw this as an initial gain brought about by the mass demonstrations.

Aghajari is a supporter of Iran’s 1979 revolution, which overthrew the U.S.-backed shah, Washington’s firmest ally in the Mideast. He fought in the 1980–88 Iran-Iraq war, when workers, peasants, and youth in Iran mobilized to defend the gains of their revolution from military attack by the government of Iraq with the tacit support of U.S. and other imperialist powers. Aghajari lost a leg in combat.

At a closed trial, Aghajari was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death by hanging for statements made in a speech that questioned whether Iranians should automatically follow the lead of politicians who are also clerics. He was also sentenced to 74 lashes, 8 years’ exile to three desert cities in Iran, and a 10-year ban on teaching.  
 
Protests around the country
In addition to protests in Tehran, student actions spread to Hamedan, where Aghajari gave his speech; Kerman; Isfahan; Tabriz; and Orumieh, on the border of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan.

Unlike the 1999 protests, Iranian police have carried out few arrests this time. There have been reports of plainclothes thugs assaulting some student demonstrators. By November 19 almost all universities and colleges in the country had joined in the protests. "The execution of Aghajari is the execution of the university!" 5,000 demonstrators chanted at Tehran University. "Political prisoners should be freed!"

At Amir Kabir University of Technology, Tehran’s main technical school, thousands of students rallied, as they did at Sharif University, the major scientific institution.

"We’re not looking for another revolution," said Yashar Ghajar, a speaker from the Islamic Students Association, at the Amir Kabir rally. "We’re looking for freedom of expression--and freedom after expression."

At Modaress Training University, which trains teachers in Tehran, more than 1,000 students demonstrated, carrying portraits of Aghajari and demanding the resignation of Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the head of the Iranian court system.

In a statement, protesters said, "The death sentence for Mr. Aghajari is punishing him for his opinion, which is against the Constitution and human rights." Several Modaress professors resigned to protest the sentence. Two members of parliament from Hamedan also resigned.

A counterdemonstration held at Tehran University on November 19 attracted some 2,500 students from schools in the city. The demonstration was held under the banner of "Protesting the Power and Wealth Mafia." Its thrust was to support the Ayatollah Khamenei leadership against the liberal reformers of President Mohammed Khatami’s regime and against those getting rich through their connections to the state. It signaled continuing fissures in the ruling-class factions.

The declaration issued by the demonstrators pointed to former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is associated with Ayatollah Khamenei, and requested he come forward to clarify the wealth his children have allegedly accumulated, in view of "the rumors that have been going around in recent years."  
 
Imperialist war drive
The upsurge of protest activity comes as Washington rapidly escalates war moves against neighboring Iraq. No wing of the Iranian regime has resolutely condemned this imperialist aggression. In fact, coastal units of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, according to the New York Times, have facilitated U.S. and Australian troops boarding foreign ships in the Arab-Persian Gulf in the tightening of the imperialist blockade of Iraq.

Last January, U.S. government officials declared Iran part of an "axis of evil" to be targeted together with Iraq and north Korea. The following month, millions of Iranians demonstrated in cities across the country to condemn the U.S. threats and show their determination to defend the social and political gains of their revolution.

The two main factions of the Iranian government, however, have muted their criticism of the U.S.-led war drive against Iraq, while intensifying their infighting.

Khatami was first elected president in 1997 on a platform that included promises of greater democratic rights. Many youth, as well as the big majority of workers and peasants, supported his ticket.

Those in the ruling class opposed to loosening restrictions on the press and speech have sought to use the courts that they control to ban liberal publications and imprison Khatami supporters.

Khatami declared that the verdict against Aghajari was "improper" and "never should have been issued at all." He urged students to subdue their protests. "Nothing should be done that creates tension or problems," he said.

Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karrubi, in a speech broadcast live on state-run Tehran radio, said the sentence against Aghajari was "disgusting" and advocated his release. He called on the courts to overturn the sentence "before we pay a heavier price for it."

One hundred eighty-one members of the 290-seat parliament signed a letter urging the lifting of the death sentence.

Prior to asking the judiciary to review the Aghajari verdict, Ayatollah Khamenei had declared, "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," according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

Among those referred to as "popular forces" are the Basiji, which originated among working people and youth who volunteered in the 1980s for the war effort to resist the U.S-backed invasion by Iraq’s government. The Basiji have most recently been involved in confrontations against young people demanding more freedom of expression and assembly.

According to the Los Angeles Times, however, some in the Basiji have joined the outcry against the death sentence for Aghajari. A letter from Basiji to the judiciary, posted up on the Amir Kabir campus, said, "This sentence is so unconventional that it has raised a lot of questions," reported the Times. The letter urged that the sentence be overturned.

Other Basiji have joined counter-demonstrations.

Some at demonstrations supporting Aghajari have identified their opponents as "Taliban," raising slogans such as, "One day, Taliban will also be ousted from Iran!" The capitalist press in the United States has reported this hopefully, suggesting that it signifies a growing social base for imperialism in Iran. Other demonstrators have couched their slogans in anti-U.S. language, such as "Taliban Islam is American Islam." The media has not reported slogans opposing imperialism or the U.S.-led drive toward war at either the pro-Aghajari rallies or the counter-demonstrations.

IRNA reported that Aghajari’s wife, Zahra Behnoudi, visited him in prison and afterward said he asked the students to "make their demands in the framework of the law."

"A group of people are seeking to inflame student movements. Thus, the students must follow up their demands in calm and with awareness and not let their movements be exploited," she quoted her husband as saying.

Aghajari’s sister Zohreh has called for her brother’s speech, his defense at the trial, as well as the indictment to be published in newspapers so people can make up their own minds.  
 
 
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