"The Place Reeks of Conspiracy"

As strife mounts, Khomeini denounces the nation's chaos

In Tehran, right-wing Muslim fanatics attacked a rally of leftist Mujahidin with clubs and paving stones. Tear gas filled the air, and Revolutionary Guards opened fire on the brawling mob surging through the streets. The bloody fighting near the U.S. embassy left at least one dead and 300 injured.

In the mountain village of Jamaran, two miles north of the capital, the corridors of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's modest house buzzed like a beehive. Turbaned mullahs, ostensibly come to congratulate the Ayatullah on the anniversary of Mab'ath, the day God chose Muhammad as his Prophet, seized the occasion to denounce their enemies and advance their respective causes. The byzantine scene prompted one local observer to remark, "The place reeks of conspiracy."

No one seemed more aware of the strife swirling in Iran than Khomeini. Just two days before the Tehran street clashes, in a speech to his provincial governors, he had issued an extraordinary warning of impending "chaos." Said he: "I am worried that the Islamic Republic could be defeated by those who are on our side. If dissension among us continues, then we shall destroy one another." Thus after months of thundering against the U.S. and other allegedly demonic foreign forces, Khomeini had finally admitted that the greatest threat to his regime stemmed from its own internal conflicts.

Though Khomeini cited no names, he was clearly alarmed by the bitter power struggle between moderate President Abolhassan Banisadr and hard-lining Ayatullah Seyyed Mohammed Beheshti, the leader of the clergy-dominated Islamic Republic Party. Behind their personal rivalry lay opposed visions of government: Beheshti and his fundamentalist allies seek total power in a single-party theocratic state. Banisadr and fellow moderates like Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh want a modern, pragmatic government within an Islamic revolutionary framework; they are especially eager to shore up an economy reeling under 50% inflation, 30% unemployment and drastically declining oil production.

Beheshti's party has so far succeeded in hamstringing Banisadr. First, it has used its domination of the ruling Revolutionary Council to frustrate the President's attempts to name a Prime Minister and resolve the problem of the 53 U.S. citizens held hostage since Nov. 4. Now the clerical party is making the same tactical use of its domination of the newly elected parliament.

Out of patience with his clerical rivals, Banisadr blasted back at them last week. "Some people want me to be the President while they exercise my powers," he declared in an interview. "I shall not hesitate to take action against those who consider themselves above the law." On the issue of the hostages, he warned against attempts to put them on trial as spies, as recommended by a number of the mullahs. Such trials, he said, would create "great complications."

Banisadr's view was seconded by Ghotbzadeh, who down-played the idea of trials while attending a two-day meeting of the Socialist International in Oslo, Norway, which Iran sought to use as a forum for its "anti-imperialist mission." But his exasperation over the whole perplexing issue also prompted him at one point to exclaim: "To hell with the American hostages!" Actually, no resolution of the hostage crisis was likely to emerge before mid-July at the earliest, since the faction-ridden parliament, to which Khomeini has left the final decision, will not even consider the matter before choosing a Prime Minister. Furthermore, most parliamentary members polled by the local press seem to favor trials.

As political infighting intensified, so did civil strife. Two days after Khomeini had warned of impending chaos, the government announced that it had arrested six soldiers for plotting to topple his regime and return the Shah to power. The conspiracy had allegedly developed in an army unit stationed in the largely Kurdish-inhabited province of Western Azerbaijan, where renewed fighting last week between government troops and autonomist Kurdish rebels reportedly left a "large number" dead.

Watching over Iran's tumult was an octogenarian who seemed to be in danger of losing control of the revolution he had triumphantly ushered in 16 months ago. Much of the fault appeared to be Khomeini's own. He had wavered indecisively while the mullahs undermined the authority of a constitutionally elected President. His obdurate pronouncements had favored the fanatics over the pragmatists. Now even his own authority seemed threatened by Beheshti and his colleagues. "No honest observer can escape the conclusion that Khomeini himself has encouraged the Islamic Republic Party to become a Frankenstein," charged a senior Iranian politician. "He should kill the monster before it is too late." Taming the mullahs was probably Khomeini's main goal in speaking out against factionalism last week. But time might be running out both for the Ayatullah and for the clerical hardliners. As one Western diplomat observed: "People have had enough of mullahs. The most likely future rulers of Iran are either leftists or army officers."

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