Passionate Politics

By Scott Macleod/Tehran

Washington may wonder if Iran's President Mohammed Khatami is really a reformer, but the country's mullahs have no such doubts. In the 11 months since Khatami's upset election victory, the conservative clerics who have long monopolized power have done all they can to prevent the more moderate Khatami from easing their doctrinaire, anti-Western rule.

Last week a showdown seemed imminent, as the ideological struggle over Iran's future spilled into the streets. Hard-line judicial authorities had jailed one of Khatami's closest allies, Tehran Mayor Gholamhossein Karabaschi, on corruption charges. Hundreds of students gathered at Tehran University's gates demanding Karabaschi's release. Police officials sent riot squads charging into the crowd, using clubs and tear gas to break up the protest. Dozens of students were dragged away and arrested. Said an Iranian journalist beaten by the police: "I haven't seen anything like this since the protests against the Shah."

Fears that this standoff could escalate seemed to sober the clerics. Led by Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme spiritual leader, the conservatives reluctantly agreed to release Karabaschi on bail. At stake, though, was far more than the legal fate of Tehran's mayor. "I am only a small servant," Karabaschi told cheering well-wishers on his release. The mayor had quickly become a symbol of the public's hopes for political and social tolerance inspired by Khatami's election, and his arrest was regarded as a not-so-veiled offensive against the President's reformist plans.

While the clerics backed away from confrontation this time, the struggle is hardly over. Hard-liners include influential Tehran merchants as well as the mullahs in the holy city of Qum, and they still control the Majlis, or parliament, as well as the powerful Islamic judicial system, the military and the police. In Khamenei they have a leader invested with the constitutional right of absolute rule, granted to Iran's most distinguished Shi'ite Muslim clergyman, whom even a democratically elected President cannot easily challenge.

Nevertheless, Khatami has been trying to whittle away at the clerics' power and gradually relax the strictures of Iran's 19-year-old revolution. In a January interview, he called on "the great American people" to overcome misunderstandings, suggesting that Iran would like to ease its estrangement from the West. He has granted more freedom to the press; his aides speak of civil liberties; and his government has successfully pushed a parliamentary proposal to weaken the power of the Council of Guardians, a 12-member body controlled by Khamenei that routinely disqualifies opposition candidates to manipulate election outcomes. Even though Khatami's tangible accomplishments are few, the young people and women who voted overwhelmingly for him last year stick by their fervent support.

Few of the President's allies represented the new ways better than Mayor Karabaschi. He has brought order and civility to the chaotic capital of 10 million, untangling traffic, lacing the city with green parks and transforming a slum into an amusement park.

All this sparked intense nervousness among hard-line clerics. The President's opponents thought they had an easy target in Karabaschi when a probe into city hall corruption yielded several graft cases. By convicting the popular mayor of embezzlement and mismanagement, the conservatives hoped also to eliminate the brilliant campaign strategist behind Khatami's electoral victory. With Karabaschi in jail, conservatives thought they might have a better chance of maintaining control of the Majlis in the 2000 elections and defeating Khatami in the 2001 presidential race.

But they seem to have badly underestimated Karabaschi's popularity and Khatami's determination to fight back. The government quickly condemned the arrest and put out word that it might begin a tit-for-tat investigation of corruption in conservative quarters. Other politicians spoke out, including parliament member Faezeh Hashemi, daughter of former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who called Karabaschi's arrest "a blow to democracy."

The mayor was freed from detention just a few days after Ayatullah Khamenei summoned the President and his hard-line foes to a meeting to defuse the crisis. Even if the mayor's trial still goes ahead as scheduled in a few weeks, last week's street show may have given Khatami a crucial boost by serving notice that Iran's reformers will not be intimidated. "The President understands that reform is not a short-term project," says a Khatami adviser. "He knows the realities. His long-term plan is gaining power step by step." But it seems unlikely that Iran's zealous clerics will easily give way to any moderating revolution in progress.