Iran A Revolution Loses Its Zeal

By EDWARD W. DESMOND/TEHRAN

The icons of Iran's Islamic revolution are not what they used to be. The former U.S. embassy in downtown Tehran, where radical students held 52 U.S. hostages for 444 days, retains only the faintest echo of those angry days. The anti-U.S. slogans on the compound's walls are faded, and the Revolutionary Guards standing outside are definitely part of a new generation. A bearded, young guardsman asks of a passing foreigner, "Are you American?" To a nod, he responds with a big smile and says, "Very good."

Outside the city, a huge gold-domed shrine marking the tomb of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, who died in 1989, is all but complete, and on weekends families flock there. But apart from a few offering fervent prayers near his tomb, most of the visitors chat and play with their children, unawed by the presence of the revolutionary imam's earthly remains.

Twelve years after Khomeini came to power, Iran's Islamic revolution has finally softened around the edges. The signs of fitful change are everywhere. On Tehran's streets women still observe hijab (the veil), the Islamic injunction that women keep themselves covered save for their faces and hands. But some have exchanged their shapeless black chadors for slightly fitted raincoats in colors like green and purple. Veils that are supposed to completely cover a woman's hair are inching back to reveal hints of the lush coiffures underneath. Women's lips and fingernails are beginning to sport glosses for the first time in years, though in appropriately muted shades.

Much of that change, dramatic by the standards of revolutionary Iran, has been at least indirectly endorsed by President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who came to power two months after Khomeini's death. Rafsanjani has not actually called for a reversal of strict Islamic injunctions, but in oblique ways he is signaling that he favors a more relaxed approach, especially in the enforcement of hijab. In a much publicized sermon last November, for example, Rafsanjani chided fellow clerics who make a virtue of "austerity" and argued that "appreciating beauty and seeking embellishment are serious feelings. To fight them is not God's desire."

The remarks ignited a debate among the country's mullahs that is still blazing. Two weeks ago, Ayatullah Abdul Karim Mousavi Ardebili, a conservative religious figure and former chief justice, said in a televised sermon that he was ashamed by the way hijab was being flouted and that "the revolution was headed for destruction" if the people did not step forward. Within a few days the Revolutionary Guards, who sometimes act independently of government wishes, began rounding up young women in the street whose dress they found objectionable. On Vali Asr Avenue, the capital's main shopping boulevard, a guardsman tried halfheartedly to capture a young woman by throwing a blanket over her. Surprisingly enough, she fought back and escaped.

That small incident, as much as the debate between Rafsanjani and the conservative stalwarts, illustrates a revolution running low on zeal. Today Rafsanjani faces a population exhausted by eight years of war with Iraq, domestic political turmoil and a severe economic slump. The President seems to realize he must respond to those hardships, and thus has tried to ease the harsh enforcement of hijab. More important, Rafsanjani wants to end Iran's pariah status in the world community and gain desperately needed aid. "We are in a period of reconstruction," says Rajaie Khorassani, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Majlis (parliament). In a more terse analysis, a Western diplomat concludes, "The revolution is over."

The cost of living seems as much on people's minds as anything in the Koran. A well-paid government worker makes about $100 a month, but that is less than the monthly rent of a squalid flat in Tehran. Many men have at least two jobs, and working-class Iranians have taken to muttering that "life was better under the Shah."

Rafsanjani wants to rescue the economy by returning the nationalized industries to private hands and attracting foreign investment and technology. His government has also initiated talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in hopes of eventually obtaining loans. Those steps, however, depart from the revolution's commitment to reject outside influence (the Islamic republic's constitution explicitly forbids foreign investment), and his adversaries in the Majlis will not go along.

So far, Rafsanjani has succeeded on one major front: he has shed much of Iran's ultraconservative image and upgraded or restored ties with many European and Middle Eastern countries as well as Canada. Rafsanjani's opposition to Iraq's seizure of Kuwait, despite calls in the Majlis for Iran to back Saddam Hussein, earned Tehran considerable credit in foreign capitals.

Rafsanjani is quietly eager to improve ties with Washington, at least in part to get back $11 billion in American-held assets frozen in 1979. But Rafsanjani cannot easily reverse 12 years of violent rhetoric directed against the "Great Satan." So while government officials have toned down the + diatribes against the U.S. in the hope of better relations, they still lash out now and again lest the contradictions become too obvious. Two weeks ago, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, the country's new spiritual leader, declared, "The U.S. will never have normal relations with a system that has made Islamic values its most cherished desire."

Rafsanjani's rise as a pragmatist is possible only because his credentials as an Islamic revolutionary are impeccable. Yet he has consistently shown political acumen and moderation throughout his government career. Several times he won popular elections to posts, and in Friday prayers his easy manner is refreshing to a country tired of harangues from harsh-tongued mullahs. In his famous November sermon, for example, Rafsanjani argued that young people were being asked to deny the "sexual urge" for too long, and that "temporary marriage," a Shi'ite institution endorsing sexual liaisons for fixed periods of time, ought to be more widely accepted. Says a Western diplomat: "His main weapon is that he speaks the same language as ordinary people, and he talks directly about their difficulties."

Rafsanjani's greatest problem will be to consolidate his power. But the system, which is fairly democratic within the terms of the Islamic constitution, makes it hard for him to circumvent the Majlis. The deputies, for example, recently fired his Health Minister for being inadequately "Islamic," and last week a similar motion against his Education Minister was under discussion. Still, Rafsanjani is gradually consolidating his authority. The Komiteh, the police equivalent of the Revolutionary Guard, is being merged with the regular police, which should limit their ability to act as independent enforcers of hijab.

Iran may be emerging from the long night of a bloody revolution, but as a Persian proverb says, the apple turns many times before it falls. There are still severe human rights abuses, due to a combination of poor accountability in the courts and Islamic injunctions and punishments, including the widespread use of the death sentence for offenses like drug trafficking. Iranians are still scared, even as they dare to test the limits of hijab. Says a young woman who strongly opposes the Islamic regime: "If this is a transitional stage, if we have learned from past mistakes, this may be the beginning of something good." The challenge for Rafsanjani is to turn a revolutionary regime into a popular one.