Nowruz 1379: Iran at a Crossroads

The ancient Iranian New Year’s festival of Nowruz on March 21 ushered in the Iranian solar year 1379 (uniquely, Iran uses a solar Islamic calendar: it is 1420 in the Islamic lunar calendar). The new year followed, in rapid succession, the recent Parliamentary election victory by Iran’s reform movement, the attempted assassination of a key reformer, a mortar attack in Tehran by the Mujahedin-e Khalq, and a new overture from US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Clearly, it is going to be a very interesting, if perhaps dangerous, year.

It is clear enough that the reformers have won a tremendous victory at the ballot box, but as The Estimate has frequently noted, their hardline opponents still control the security apparatus, the Council of Guardians, and other key institutions. The attempted assassination of a key editor and member of the Tehran City Council, Sa‘eed Hajjarian ( Profile, this issue) suggests to some, at least, that the anti-reform elements, unable to win at the ballot box, will resort to less democratic means to stop reform.

Secretary Albright’s overture, meanwhile, is the latest in a series of cautious US moves seeking to thaw the long-frozen US-Iranian relationship. The actual gesture, lifting sanctions on a few items including pistachios, carpets and caviar, may seem largely symbolic, but the overall tone of the speech also welcomed and encouraged the democratic reforms while continuing to remind Iran that the US opposes its alleged role in supporting terrorism and its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Iran’s response to earlier US overtures was largely to say that the US must do more; its response to Albright was, essentially, the same but perhaps with a bit more willingness to recognize that the US might no longer be as adamant as it once was. But the Iranian leadership reacted to Albright mostly with silence: the Nowruz speeches this week largely ignored the move.

In part, certainly, that is because Iran is trying to cultivate its own garden at the moment, and there are plenty of internal concerns. Even before the second round of Parliamentary voting, the victorious reformers show some signs of wanting to go too far too fast (for the conservatives), and some signs of disagreeing among themselves on such key issues as the economy. There have also been some signs that President Mohammad Khatami, the symbol and vanguard of the reformers, is in fact somewhat uncomfortable with some of the positions taken by the more outspoken reformers, his brother included. The assassination attempt against Hajjarian adds to the danger that what has so far been a relatively nonviolent revolution may become a much bloodier one.

President Khatami visiting the wounded Hajjarian in the hospital (IRNA)

At this fast-moving moment, it seems appropriate to join Iran in greeting Nowruz 1379 with an assessment of the year to come.

The attempted assassination of Sa‘eed Hajjarian on March 12 may eventually prove to have been one of the critical moments in Iran’s reform movement. Coming after the solid victory in the parliamentary elections, it suggests that at least some conservatives, perhaps particularly in the security and intelligence organs, are prepared to shift the battle from the ballot box to the gun.

The gunman was, according to the Iranian authorities’ own announcement, mounted on a 1000cc. motorcycle. Motorcycles of such power are legally restricted to the security services and police. When it was subsequently announced that a student had been arrested and that he had confessed to the crime, it was stated that he had confirmed that the motorcycle was his own, not a government one.

The Iranian media were chafing under a government restriction that only official news be reported on the attack. The “student” involved, Sa‘id Asghar, was described as an Islamic radical who may have been involved in an earlier killing. But Hajjarian’s own newspaper also said, in a veiled hint at something more, that he and his accomplices were former members of an “organization”. Press reports abroad, including the Iran Press Service in London and the London-based Arabic daily al-Sharq al-Awsat were reporting that Asghar was a member of an Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (Pasdaran ) unit based in Shahr-Rey. The al-Sharq al-Awsat story claimed that a faction of the Pasdaran calling itself the “Islam Combatants Corps” was behind the shooting.

The veiled hints of an “organization” being involved, and the unusual ban on the media publishing unofficial reports, would lend credence to the idea that members of the Guards Corps may well have been involved. The Pasdaran leadership is generally supportive of the hard-liners, and last year the Guards Commander warned the media against certain types of reporting.

If the Pasdaran and/or the security services are involved, or appear to be, then the attack may be part of a continuing pattern. For one thing, Hajjarian is a former intelligence official himself, but worse, his newspaper, Sobh-e Emroz, has been leading the campaign to expose the Intelligence Ministry officials who were behind the 1998 series of killings of dissidents. In other words, to many in the intelligence services, Hajjarian may seem the worst kind of traitor: an agent turned reformer, bent on exposing his own former colleagues. Many believe that he himself was the channel for some of the revelations his newspaper’s reporter, Akbar Ganji, revealed about the Intelligence Ministry’s involvement in the 1998 killings. And the Pasdaran and Intelligence Ministry have many links with each other.

Whether or not that is really why Hajjarian was shot, it is clear enough that the issue of the Intelligence Ministry’s attitude towards those who disagree with it politically is once again a crucial issue. There are those who believe that the authorization of the 1998 killings went considerably higher than the officials blamed so far, and that press investigation might have been getting close to finding links with senior clerics.

Whether or not that is true may be less important than how many people believe it to be. Some of the more outspoken reformers are already trying to pin the attempt on Hajjarian on members of the senior clerical leadership. That could lead to an open attack on the system of velayat-e faqih, or clerical rule.

But that could lead to a breach between the reformers and President Khatami. The President has, himself, never sanctioned criticism of the Islamic system, based on the theories of the late Ruhollah Khomeini; support for that system is in fact a requirement for candidates standing for office. The reformers have gotten as far as they have, at least in part, by being moderate. Some have wondered if Khatami runs the risk of becoming a Gorbachev: in opening the windows to change, the system itself comes apart. The Iranian system is neither as monolithic nor as inflexible as the pre-Gorbachev USSR, but the parallels are not completely imaginary.

Certainly many of the young Iranians supporting the reform movement are disillusioned with clerical rule. Twenty years after the revolution, Iran’s young do not remember the Shah or the rationale for the imposition of Islamic rule, and have few sympathies for the continued imposition of rigorous social restrictions. Khatami has sought to channel those frustrations in order to change the system from within. But he does not control the Army, the Pasdaran and its “mobilization” militia, the Basij, or the intelligence services. Some called for a major reform of the security elements after the 1998 killings were linked to the Intelligence Ministry; but the government successfully deflected those demands, basically dismissing the killings as a case of rogue agents who would be punished. Hajjarian’s wounding brings that issue to the fore again.

The Economy

It is easy enough for Westerners — perhaps especially Americans — to confuse political reform and social liberalism with economic reform and market liberalism. But the coalition which elected Khatami and which has now about to take control of Parliament is a curious amalgam of entrepreneurs and old leftists, and forging a genuine economic reform program may prove difficult. In fact, as some have noted, it might have been easier with the old Majles than with the new.

Iran’s need for economic reform is widely recognized, but it is not easily implemented. Article 44 of the Constitution gives the state control over most of the country’s main sources of wealth. Prohibitions against foreign ownership have blocked foreign investment, including investment by the large expatriate Iranian community in the West. The labor laws virtually prohibit firing anyone. Efforts to create a foreign investment law have been blocked by the Council of Guardians; attempts to amend the labor law by the outgoing Parliament have provoked labor unrest.

The prevalence of old leftists in many of the reformist ranks may make it difficult to reform the economy. Yet without economic reform, many of the younger supporters who backed the reformist movement in the hopes of a better life may be disappointed, and that could threaten Khatami’s hopes for re-election next year.

Social Reforms

Meanwhile, the reformers have already made clear that their first actions, once the new Parliament finally meets in May, will be to pursue a number of more cosmetic reforms, such as lifting the ban on satellite dishes. But in fact, the satellite dish ban is emblematic of the whole culture war going on in Iran at the moment. Access to Western media is anathema to the hard-liners, who see it as threatening the Islamic system with Western ideas and images. Pasdaran and Basij vigilantes have been known to raid home suspected of having satellite dishes, for precisely that reason.

The Khatami government, particularly under the leadership of the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, Ata’ollah Mohajerani, has been actively seeking to mellow down the harsh social restrictions imposed at the time of the revolution. (When Khatami himself held the Culture Ministry some years ago, he presided over the rebirth of the Iranian cinema.) But some efforts at cultural leniency have been blocked by the hardline Majles, and now, with a reform Majles, that barrier is presumably removed.

But there are others. The Council of Guardians remains conservative, and can overturn Majles legislation. The Pasdaran and Basij continue to function as vigilantes of sorts, as do the Hizbollahi gangs in the streets. Here too, the attack on Hajjarian suggests that at least some hardliners are ready to use violence now that they have lost at the ballot box.

Reforming the Justice System

Another key area the reformers are targeting is the justice system, which has been dominated by clerical conservatives. But the selection last year of Mahmud Hashemi-Shahrudi as the Head of the Judiciary Council, replacing one of the hardest hardliners, Mohammad Yazdi, has led to hopes of reform. Hashemi-Shahrudi, who ironically was born in Iraq (See the Profile in The Estimate, September 24, 1999) has replaced some judges, has released or reduced the sentences of large numbers of prisoners, and has sought to enforce requirements that police must have a court warrant before searching homes. There have even been suggestions that some of the harsh punishments (including a large number of offenses punishable by death) may be changed.

One key target of the reformers is the special clerical court which has been used to try a number of dissidents, including former Interior Minister ‘Abdullah Nouri. But it remains one of the weapons in the hands of the hardliners, and they may be expected to defend it as a check against the reformers.

If Hashemi-Shahrudi represents judicial reform within the system, there are many reformers who would like to attack the system itself, creating a truly independent judiciary not dependent on the clerical leadership. But that raises other sensitivities: if the nature of the Islamic system is to create a state based on the shari‘a, then clerical control of the judiciary seems to follow logically; creation of a judiciary independent of the clerical establishment would seem to undermine the Islamic system as set up by Khomeini, and in fact could be construed as an attack on the underpinnings of the principal of velayat-e faqih.

And thus, once again, we come back to the question of just how far the reformers are willing to go. Some of them more or less openly question the whole principle of the present state, but they cannot do so publicly and stand for office. Ayatollah Hossein ‘Ali Montazeri, who was once Khomeini’s designated successor and who helped write velayat-e faqih into the Iranian constitution, is a prominent critic of the system, one not very effectively silenced by efforts at house arrest. Some key academics and others have emerged as prominent critics of the system. And some of the leaders of the Islamic Iran Participation Front have implied, in their criticism of the division of power between the Leader and the President, that the religious leadership (chosen not by the people but by the clerical establishment) may have outlived its utility. But — if actually articulated — that would amount to a direct assault on the Islamic system.

Though some leading reformers do skate perilously close to calling for an abandonment of the Islamic system, that has not been the case with President Khatami, himself of course a cleric. As suggested earlier, there are some signs that the more fervid reformers are becoming a bit disillusioned with Khatami, who was seen by some as siding with the establishment against the student demonstrators in the student confrontations last year.

Up to this point, the reform movement in Iran has been evolutionary, rather than revolutionary. It has shown that the Iranian system, for all its limitations and restrictions, did allow sufficient room for reformers to emerge. But as the reformers have won victory after victory, the hardliners have fought in the trenches at each step of the way. And now that they have lost control of the Majles, there remaining instruments of power are primarily coercive: the intelligence services, the Armed Forces, the Pasdaran, the Basij. If those are the only instruments remaining to the conservatives, then what has been mostly a culture war, with a bit of bloodshed during the student demonstrations but otherwise relatively peaceful, might turn into a more authentic war. The Hajjarian shooting may turn out to be an isolated incident, but what concerns many observers and the reformers themselves is that, in the wake of the 1998 series of killings, it does not seem isolated at all.

Ironically, moderation might triumph because of the establishment itself. There are signs that Leader Ahmad Khamene’i, former President ‘Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and others are trying to find a middle ground, alarmed at the growing polarization between the hardliners and the reformers.

But that remains to be seen. The reformers, flush with victory, are clearly upset about the Hajjarian attack, about the media restrictions in reporting on it, about the cancellation of certain election results by the Council of Guardians, and other indications that the hardliners are still fighting every step of the way before yielding ground to reform. And there is still the second round of runoff elections for seats not decided in the first round.

One reason for Iran’s virtual non-acknowledgment of Madeleine Albright’s overtures is clearly the unwillingness of anyone, particularly in the reform camp, to give their enemies the opportunity to label them favorites of the Americans. The power struggle in Iran is not only not over, but it may be entering its most dangerous phase, and the image of the United States in revolutionary mythology is such that no one wants to seem to be an American stooge. US praise for reform has so far been cautiously expressed, and that is probably wise.

Having won the Majles, the reformers now have a bit over year before Khatami’s first term expires. Given the slowness of the legislative process and the likely objections of the Council of Guardians, major reforms will probably be few before the Presidential campaign is imminent.

Khatami, today, would certainly win another term. But Mikhail Gorbachev once seemed entrenched as well, until his system dissolved out from under him once he opened the windows. The Hajjarian shooting is a reminder that recent reform victories are not the end of the story, and that surprises may lurk in the future.

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