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Khatami on top as ministry admits murder link

By Robin Allen in Dubai
The Financial Times
Jan. 07, 1999

Mohammad Khatami, Iran's reformist president, appears to have made a dramatic breakthrough in his battle with the hardline clerical establishment after the intelligence ministry had to admit that its agents had been involved in recent murders of secular and intellectual leaders.

The intelligence ministry, officially known as the information ministry, admitted that an unspecified number of its agents, six according to the Tehran press yesterday but nearer 50 according to one Iranian analyst, had been arrested.

"It (the intelligence ministry) clearly understands the dimensions of this catastrophe," it said. A series of six murders and unexplained disappearances of prominent secular figures and reformist intellectuals late last year shocked Iranians, particularly supporters of Mr Khatami who accused Qorbanali Dorri Najafabadi, the intelligence minister, of being behind a plot to intimidate and discredit the president.

All six had been outspoken critics of the clerical establishment.

Mr Khatami's apparent failure, until this week, to exert his authority to discover who was responsible was also driving a wedge between his more activist supporters who were becoming visibly impatient, and the "silent majority" of ordinary Iranians. Since a landslide election victory last year pitched Mr Khatami into office, he has consistently tried to translate nationwide support into national authority.

Against him are conservative vested interests, who form the largest group in parliament and are led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's spiritual leader, who has control of many levers of power, including the armed forces, law-enforcement units of the interior ministry, including the police and security forces, state radio and television, the judiciary and foreign policy.

Within these groups are, according to Mr Khajehpour, "the dark forces, a coalition of business and intelligence people who want to monopolise power and have been trying to discredit Mr Khatami and destabilise Iran by terrorist acts."

But with Mr Khatami hitting back, "some of the renegades are now willing to trade information in return for their own safety." Others, like Ali Razin, the diehard head of the Tehran judiciary wounded on Tuesday in a grenade attack on his car, may be suspected of knowing too much, and are themselves targets from the groups.

The president, according to one analyst, "has shown he is capable of exerting his authority in one of the hardliners' most sensitive strongholds. The hardliners, for a change, have their backs to the wall. Ayatollah Khamenei will find it harder to justify not only his own personal control over the intelligence ministry but also the secrecy of its operations."

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