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Copyright © 1994-98, by the Middle EastData Project, Inc. All rights reserved.
The factional rivalry between supporters of President Khatami, whois seeking to liberalize Iran's system of clerical rule, and hisradical opponents, erupted into street brawls on at least threeoccasions last month.
The street clashes occurred as jockeying within the regimeintensified. Both Khatami and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene'icautiously embraced each other in public speeches over the past threeweeks, suggesting that they were seeking to prevent an open rift thatcould lead to widespread violence.
Some 100 pro-Khatami demonstrators, who had cheered the Presidentat a May 23 rally in Tehran to commemorate the first anniversary hiselection, were beaten by police after leaving Tehran University, thepro-Khatami daily Hamshahri reported, with many taken into policecustody. Two days later, students calling for election reforms andgreater political freedom were attacked by Hezbollahi thugs near theTehran University campus. And on May 29, more violent clashes eruptedbetween supporters and opponents of Khatami in the central Iraniancity of Isfahan.
The most violent of the clashes occurred on May 25 in Tehran'sLaleh Park, where some 2,000 students rallied under the banner of theIslamic Students Association and were set upon almost immediately byopponents armed with sticks, chains and stones.
The attackers, widely assumed to be members of the Ansar-eHezbollah which owes allegiance to Ayatollah Khamene'i, wrecked soundequipment brought to the rally by the students and disrupted a speechby ISA President, Heshmatollah Tabarzadi. The Tehran students hadobtained a permit to hold their pro-democracy demonstration fromInterior Minister Abdallah Nouri, after earlier attempts to hold therally without a permit were blocked.
Tabarzadi has been the victim of Hezbollahi thugs before, andattempted to deliver his speech over the din of the crowd. Accordingto one account, one of the attackers shouted back at him: "We don'twant freedom. Freedom will lead to a day when the chador will bedropped and the American will return to Iran."
The rally organizers were calling for non-clerics and women to beallowed to run in October elections for the Assembly of Experts, the80-member elected body that selects the Supreme Leader. They werealso seeking to end the power of the Council of Guardians todetermine which candidates will appear on the ballot in local,parliamentary, and presidential elections.
Khatami challenge: The next day, Interior Minister Abdallah Nouritold an audience at Isfahan University that the Khatami cabinetintended to ask Parliament to change the legal powers of the Councilof Guardians to screen election candidates.
The Guardians reduced the number of presidential candidates inlast year's election from 238 to just four, and regularly disqualifyprominent political figures from running for Parliament because offactional squabbles.
President Khatami was feted on the previous Saturday, to mark thefirst anniversary of his election as President on May 23 (2ndKhordad). In a speech to tens of thousands of followers at TehranUniversity, he praised the system of clerical rule (Velayat-eFaghih), while extolling the virtues of democratic tolerance. "Whenwe speak of freedom," he said, "we mean the freedom of theopposition. It is not freedom if only the people who agree with thosein power are free. The art of government is not to eliminate theopposition. The art of government is to induce even the opposition tobehave within the framework of the law."
Until now, the Islamic Republic has harshly suppressed theopposition. In the early days of the Revolution, thousands offollowers of the former Shah were rounded up and massacred, mainly bythe Mujahedin-e Khalq (People's Mujahedin Organization of Iran) andby the revolutionary komitehs. Later, when the Mujahedin split withKhomeini in 1981, the regime turned against the Mujahedin, killingthousands of their followers. In more recent years, the blood-lettinghas slowed, but opposition clerics such as Grand Ayatollah MohammadShirazi remain under house arrest, and opposition political partiessuch as the Iran Nation's Party or the Iranian Freedom Party remainoutlawed, if tolerated.
Under Khatami, this pattern of suppression has been slow tochange. But small signs of a thaw are beginning to appear. A flurryof "liberal" newspapers has been authorized to appear in recentmonths. A pro-Khatami daily, Jameah ("Society"), grabbed headlineslast month when it reported a controversial speech by RevolutionaryGuards commander Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim-Safavi, who called for Iran toacquire nuclear weapons, as we reported last month. In just threemonths of publication, Jameah has ramped up daily circulation to over200,000.
Jameah has paid a price for its popularity, becoming the butt ofattacks of pro-regime radicals. The paper said its regional office inRasht was attacked twice during the first week of May by about 30Hezbollahi thugs, attempting to prevent its circulation. And in hisspeech to Revolutionary Guards officers, Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim-Safavisingled out Jameah as the vanguard of the "liberal" press, and urgedregime supporters to "cut out the tongues" of its opponents.
The increasingly critical Tehran press is also widely creditedwith having forced Ayatollah Khamene'i to release Tehran mayor GholamHossein Karbaschi, who had been jailed on corruption charges byKhamene'i crony, top judge Mohammad Yazdi. Public demonstrations wereheld in Karbaschi's favor, with demonstrators chanting sloganscritical of Yazdi.
But despite the signs of a "Prague spring," there are equallydisturbing signs that Khamene'i and his radical faction have notthrown in the towel, and intend to cut short any real reforms thatcould challenge their grip on power. Earlier in the month, Khamene'isought to discourage followers of rival Ayatollah Ali HosseinMontazeri, who remains in house arrest in a suburb of Isfahan, fromstaging a demonstration in his favor. Law Enforcement agents brokeinto the home Montazeri's son Ahmad on May 9 and arrested some of hisguests, after they objected to police filming the gathering. Thedemonstrators were demanding their release and the end of Montazeri'sdetention.
Instead, Khamene'i called on his supporters to stage acounter-demonstration after Friday prayers on May 15, when anestimated 30,000 regime supporters flooded the streets of Isfahanchanting anti-Montazeri slogans.
Isfahan clash: In the central Iranian city of Isfahan, opponentsof the pro-Khatami prayer leader, Ayatollah Jalaleddin Taheri,clashed with his supporters during Friday prayers on May 30,according to Iranian press reports.
According to an account in the daily Farda, the anti-Taherisupporters were protesting the boisterous pro-Khatami rally held onMay 23 in Tehran, during the mourning month of Muharram. A similarprotest was held by conservative clerics in Qom.
Copyright © 1994-98, by the Middle EastData Project, Inc. All rights reserved.