Days before the first anniversary of the antigovernment protests that rocked Iran, the nation’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, renewed his attack on opposition leaders on Friday, saying that they had betrayed the values of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Ayatollah Khamenei spoke on the 21st anniversary of the death of the founder of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, before a large crowd of supporters who had been bused in from around the country.

His castigation of the government’s opponents, whom he did not name, highlighted the continuing struggle over who carried the legacy of Ayatollah Khomeini. The two principal leaders of the opposition, Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hussein Moussavi, have insisted that they, too, are fighting for the goals of the revolution.

Loyalty, Ayatollah Khamenei declared, was measured by one’s position today, not in the past. “One cannot say, ‘I am the follower of Khomeini’ and then align with those who clearly and frankly carry the flag of opposing the imam and Islam,” he said in his address, which was televised.