Dead Iranian scientist's funeral sees anger at U.S., Israel.

Reuters - The Tehran funeral on Friday of a nuclear scientist blown up by a hitman saw the ruling clergy urge Iranians to rally behind it at a forthcoming election and face down Western and Israeli threats against Iran's nuclear programme.

Underscoring the global reach of the standoff, the United States imposed sanctions on a Chinese state-run energy firm for trading with Iran and assured Israelis it was ready to use force to stop Tehran acquiring nuclear weapons; but Moscow warned that it would view any attack on Iran as a threat to Russia.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, often seen as a hawk on military action, said, however, he saw new grounds to hope that Tehran could be persuaded to change tack by sanctions, through which, he said, "for the first time, I see Iran wobble."

In a mood of high emotion in a Tehran beset by U.S. and European sanctions and fears of war, hundreds of mourners followed the flag-draped coffin of Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan through the streets of the capital, two days after he and his driver were killed by a motorcycle assassin in rush-hour traffic.

"Death to America! Death to Israel!" chanted the crowd streaming away from weekly prayers at Tehran University, where the dead man was hailed as a martyr in the tradition of Imam Hussein, a revered figure for Iran's Shi'ite branch of Islam.

"Nuclear energy is our absolute right!" young men chanted.

State radio described the 32-year-old chemical engineer, as having worked on procurement for the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. That disclosure may strengthen suspicions he was targeted by Israeli and Western agencies, who say that some covert Iranian purchases confirm their scepticism of Tehran's assertion that it is not seeking to develop atom bombs.

With popular discontent growing over economic hardship and, among some, the lack of political freedoms, the clerical elite has portrayed Western hostility toward Iran's leaders and their avowedly peaceful nuclear energy programme as a spur to national unity and for suppression of dissident voices.

Ayatollah Mohammed Emami-Kashani told worshippers Ahmadi-Roshan's assassination - the latest of several attacks blamed on foreign agents - should encourage voters not to heed opposition calls to boycott a parliamentary election on March 2.

Though dissenters cannot take part, the vote will be a first test for an increasingly fractured leadership since big street protests followed the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in August 2009 and since popular uprisings against autocracy hit Iran's Arab neighbours, including ally Syria.

"The nation should wake up," Emami-Kashani said in his sermon, repeating a warning by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that Iran's Western enemies were plotting to use the election to destabilise the 32-year-old Islamic Republic.

"All the people should be united," he said.