Iran's clerics start crackdown
Tension over U.S. stance: Reformers threaten to withdraw from coalition government
Peter Goodspeed
National Post
Tuesday, July 30, 2002
The Associated Press
Muslims take part in Friday prayers in the Iranian city of Mashhad. Hardline clerics are cracking down on secular-minded reformers in Iran.
Reza Khatami
Political tensions in Iran are reaching a turning point as hardline clerical conservatives unleash a new wave of repression, closing liberal newspapers, imprisoning leading dissidents and permanently banning the country's main opposition party.
In a crackdown on reformers grouped around Mohammad Khatami, the President, conservative clerics are using their control of the judiciary and security forces to lash out at critics pushing for democratic reforms and a more secular state.
On the weekend, Iran's feared Revolutionary Court dissolved the country's oldest opposition party, the Freedom Movement, sending 33 of the group's leaders to jail and banning them from political activity for up to 10 years.
The dissidents, many of whom had been detained since 1999 following student pro-democracy riots in Tehran, were charged with a series of crimes, including seeking to topple the country's Islamic government, spreading rumours and lies by giving lectures and interviews and having unauthorized links with foreigners.
Their sudden jailing and the abrupt destruction of their political party came as other conservative clerics ordered the closure of two liberal newspapers and police began arresting and interrogating several leading intellectuals.
The confrontation follows months of conflict between conservatives and reformers over the pace of political change and what Iran's relations should be with the United States as Washington prepares a possible military strike against neighbouring Iraq.
In the wake of the latest crackdown, Iran's biggest reform party, the Participation Front -- headed by Mohammed Reza Khatami, President Khatami's younger brother -- has warned the political situation in Iran is so unstable the movement may withdraw from government entirely in protest. That would throw Iran into chaos and may force a final showdown between conservatives and reformers.
The Participation Front won up to 70% of the votes in Iran's last parliamentary elections and controls five Cabinet posts.
With 130 of 290 seats in a pro-reform parliament, the group has been demanding "the right to call government institutions to account," particularly courts which are controlled by conservative clerics who are accountable only to Iran's spiritual supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
"Our continued participation in power and in the state is conditional on the realization of the demand and rights of people," Mr. Khatami told reporters at a news conference in Tehran on Sunday.
"Otherwise, we will reach the point of decision and continue our activities from outside the structure, leaving a power which lacks a sufficient base of legitimacy."
If the Participation Front withdraws from parliament, it would undermine the legitimacy and credibility of Iran's Islamic regime and might force Mr. Khatami's brother, the President, to resign.
President Khatami has said several times he would leave office if he concluded the reform process has become immovably blocked. But so far, he has remained silent on most contentious issues while quietly mediating between reformers and conservatives.
Despite their control of both the presidency and parliament, Iran's reformers have made little headway in the last five years against hardline conservatives who control key institutions, the country's judiciary, security services, the military and state broadcast media.
The small, self-perpetuating circle of hardline clerics, who believe their power and authority comes to them through God, have constantly frustrated reformers who believe it should reside in the Iranian people.
On Sunday, as he threatened to withdraw from parliament, Mr. Khatami said that dual authority has paralyzed Iran and is crippling the country's foreign policy.
He said Iran's relations with the United States have been damaged by domestic political and religious conflict and called for a reduction of tensions.
"The history of Iran-U.S. relations is dark and complicated, but we can't live in the past," Mr. Khatami said. "In the short term, our strategy should be to reduce tensions and in the long term to adopt confidence-building measures toward the United States."
That stands in direct contradiction to everything Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has been preaching.
On the weekend, Ayatollah Khamenei went on national television to justify the latest crackdown, saying dissidents have allied themselves with the United States, which is determined to destroy Iran's Islamic Republic.
"Having given up hope of exerting military or economic pressure, the enemy is trying to drive a wedge between the system and the public, using a propaganda war to make people disillusioned in the Islamic system," he said.
The Ayatollah condemned those who see "capitulating to American bullying" as some sort of "opportunity."
Instead, he warned that, guided by God, he will use his power to intervene if any of the three constitutional institutions in Iran -- the government, judiciary and parliament -- try to divert the system from what he called "its true path."
Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the most radical element in the clerically controlled military, has accused advocates of democracy of being pawns of a U.S. invasion aimed at "challenging the values of the revolution."
George W. Bush, the U.S. President, has designated Iran as part of "an axis of evil" along with Iraq and North Korea.
He further fed conservative Iranian fears three weeks ago when he shifted relations onto a more confrontational path by accusing the Iranian government of ignoring populist demands for change.
Mr. Bush's comments were viewed as an abrupt abandonment of nearly a decade of gentle U.S. diplomacy that tried to engage Iranian reformers in the hope of weakening Iran's fundamentalist leaders.
Inside Iran, conservatives saw Mr. Bush's comments as a signal he thinks their clerical regime is teetering on the brink of collapse and may simply implode if opposition forces receive outside encouragement.
Now, Iran's hard-liners are acting as if they are in trouble, attacking dissidents, closing newspapers, banning opposition parties, threatening a new wave of social repression and declaring all calls for normal relations with the United States are tantamount to treason.
As Iran increasingly looks to be careening toward a constitutional crisis, the former Empress Fara Diba stepped into the controversy, saying Iranians are disillusioned with promises of reform and are anxious "to regain their freedom."
Speaking to reporters in Cairo, where she made her annual visit to the tomb of her husband, the former Shah of Iran, she said the real struggle in Iran is between the people and the current regime.
"I think the quarrel between the so-called radicals [conservatives] and reformers is just a game to prolong the system," she said. "The majority of people have reached the point that they are beyond reforms. What they want is a change of regime."
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