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    News & Views

Iran Leader Pushes Liberal Reforms

By Scheherezade Faramarzi
December 21, 1998

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- It's an uphill battle, but President Mohammad Khatami is doggedly pushing through liberal reforms over the opposition of powerful conservative rivals.

His right-wing foes control Parliament, the courts and prosecutors, radio and television, the Intelligence Ministry, police and security apparatus, and the financial bodies at the heart of the economy.

Most galling to his supporters is that the popularly elected president can be overridden in any decision by Iran's supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

``Mr. Khatami is very alone,'' says Zahra Eshraqi, Khatami's sister-in-law and granddaughter of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the Iranian Revolution.

``He's being treated unjustly and he cannot do anything about it,'' she complains. ``They have literally tied his hands and feet.''

But that is only half the story as Iranian life and politics refashion themselves a year and a half into Khatami's four-year term.

What's emerging, says Abbas Abdi, editor of the moderate newspaper Salam, is that the country is being run by a special kind of balance.

The conservatives challenge Khatami at every turn, but ousting him from office ``isn't doable,'' Abdi says. Khatami's popularity -- he won an unprecedented two-thirds of the 30 million votes cast in the May 1997 election -- holds back his right-wing foes.

``To a certain extent, they stick to their boundaries and don't exceed their limits,'' Abdi says.

So far, the balance has produced a steady battle of liberal action and conservative reaction. Khatami urges freedom of the press, and a raft of moderate newspapers open; conservatives try to shut them down.

Khatami calls for a dialogue with America; street thugs encouraged by his foes attack a bus carrying American tourists who have heeded the president's plea for a cultural exchange.

And the mysterious deaths of five liberal writers in recent weeks added to concerns that anti-Khatami forces are trying to undermine his authority.

But many Iranians say this struggle is not about religion or ideology. Khatami, like his foes, is a Shiite Muslim cleric; he even wears the black turban as a descendant of Prophet Mohammed.

A popular joke has it that Iranians are really fighting over whether to eat dizzi -- a traditional dish of lamb and chickpeas -- or pizza.

Iran's struggle is between the old and new, tradition and modernity, isolationism and openness to the world.

Khatami draws his strength from controlling most of the major Cabinet posts, support of about 100 deputies in the 270-seat Parliament and -- most important -- his popular mandate from last year's election.

His rivals hold much more power.

The national police, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is a virtual army outside the army, and the Baseej paramilitary forces that enforce strict religious values in neighborhoods are in the hands of the right wing and report to Khamenei.

The most powerful ``Bazaaris,'' who control traditional business and were largely behind the downfall of the monarchy in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, remain with the conservative clerics.

And Iran's huge economic foundations -- which have built a vast business empire from the inherited wealth of the ousted shah -- oppose Khatami, fearing his push to turn Iran into an industrial state within the world economy.

But even in these conservative power centers, the voters who elected Khatami give him a base among a large corps of business employees, lower-level government officials and soldiers.

For example, while the judiciary is headed by the ultraconservative Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, many low-level judges hearing everyday cases support Khatami.

Ali Movahedi Savoji, a cleric and hard-line member of Parliament, claims Khatami also is increasing his power by appointing his supporters to jobs at every level.

``Right now power is completely in the hands of the government,'' he says. ``Even school principals have been appointed by the government.''

Some, including Savoji, also argue Khatami is not faced with an implacable foe in Iran's supreme spiritual leader.

It has been suggested that Khamenei is not as strongly conservative as many people think, that while he leans to the right, he is basically trying to use his power as a balance between moderates and hard-liners.

The struggle over Iran's future is carried out almost daily on every level, from foreign policy to the rules of society.

In September, Khatami's government succeeded in renewing relations with Britain by distancing itself from Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 death sentence against British author Salman Rushdie, whose book ``The Satanic Verses'' was declared blasphemous by Khomeini.

A conservative foundation that had placed a bounty of $2 million on Rushdie's head responded by increasing the reward to $2.5 million.

Khatami's encouragement of freedom of speech and political rallies is fought at every step. With hard-line clerics' tacit consent, vigilantes armed with knives and clubs try to break up the rallies. Police then arrest the rally participants -- not the vigilantes.

But Khatami seems indefatigable. He keeps pushing his reforms with subtlety and determination.

When a liberal newspaper is shut down, he arranges a license for another. When Parliament impeached his interior minister for allowing political gatherings, Khatami named him a vice president -- with special responsibility to broaden political participation.

In October, conservatives managed to annul the candidacies of most moderates for a key assembly that appoints the supreme leader. Many Iranians were angered, and it appeared voter turnout would be embarrassingly low.

Khatami urged the public to vote anyway, if only for the least objectionable candidates. The turnout was a respectable 18 million.

Khatami's pledges to the people and especially youth to permit undreamed of freedoms -- to socialize in relative peace and express their views -- are being kept. They can listen to music pretty freely, and teen-age boys and girls are seen walking together in public.

He has eased censorship, and many long-banned books and films have been released.

Above all, Khatami has shattered people's sense of fear. Women now go out showing more hair under their scarves, and young people increasingly go to pro-democracy rallies, openly denouncing conservative clergymen by name.

Savoji, the hard-line member of Parliament, contends Khatami's political freedoms are popular only among the few rich youths. The majority of Iranians are concerned with getting an education, jobs and housing, he says.

Khatami supporters like Saeed Laylaz of the moderate Executives of Construction Party answer that no matter how much the right wing fumes, the president has created a momentum for freedom that is irreversible.

``The biggest achievement of Khatami's election is that democracy has even seeped into the right. If the right wants to survive, it has to go by those rules,'' Laylaz says.

But Laylaz also thinks Khatami and his backers need to get beyond the day-to-day battles and take stronger steps toward reform.

``We have to hurry to reach our goals,'' he says. ``Otherwise, what we fought for will collapse before our very own eyes.''


Copyright © 1997 Abadan Publishing Co. All Rights Reserved. May not be duplicated or distributed in any form