If Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad thought he was in the clear after his government managed to overwhelm opposition protesters during Thursday’s 22 Bahman rally commemorating the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Tehran, he got a rude awakening Friday.

A leading conservative rival to Ahmadinejad, lawmaker Ali Mottahari, warned that Iran was not yet out of the clear.

“We cannot claim the crisis is totally over until both sides make up for their mistakes,” he said in an interview with Khabaronline (in Persian), the news website affiliated with parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani. “The differences of opinion between the government and [the opposition] might have been eased to some extent, but they still exist. Our statesmen should not imagine that people’s massive presence in the Thursday rally reflects the approval of their performance…. The presence of political elite in the rally does not mean there is no longer any criticism or objection towards the regime.”

Mottahari recently called on opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi to stop calling for protests for a bit and let government insiders like him take care of Ahmadinejad and his ilk.