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If he has been relatively successful in his recent forays into foreign policy, President Khatami has had less luck back home, where hard-liners continue to threaten him - at times, physically.
On February 27, the Special Court of the Clergy arrested one-time Khatami advisor Hojjat-ol eslam Mohsen Kadivar, after he had published a series of articles criticizing clerical rule (Velayat-e Faqih). Reuters reported on 2/21 that Kadivar had been summoned for questioning by the Special Court of the Clergy, established by Ayatollah Khomeini only weeks before his death to conduct secret trials of members of the clergy accused of offensives against the Islamic Republic.
Kadivar was accused of slandering clerical rule and questioning the existence of the Special Court, and has demanded an open trial and the right to lawyers of his own choice.
Kadivar also happens to be a brother-in-law of Ataollah Mohajerani, the reformist Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance who has been a primary target of the hard-liners, who criticize his efforts to allow greater press freedom. A sister, Jamileh Kadivar, was the top female vote-getter during the Local Council elections in Tehran last month, and ran on a reformist ticket.
Reformist groups had planned to hold demonstrations demanding Kadivar's release in early March, but postponed them so not to interfere with Khatami's trip to Italy.
But Kadivar's arrest also angered conservative and even hard-line clerics, who accused the Special Court of the Clergy of overstepping its bounds. Even the government's Islamic Human Rights Commission, which is named by the Majlis, denounced the Court for failing to explain why Kadivar had been jailed, and for preventing members of the Commission from visiting him in Evin jail.
Posters supporting Kadivar's release from jail sprouted up all over Tehran the day he was arrested, and Iranian dailies have widely condemned the arrest. The pro-Khatami Hamshahri quoted moderate cleric Ayatollah Abdol-Karim Musavi-Ardebili as expressing "regret" over the arrest, while Sobh-e Emrouz quoted Conservative Majlis deputy Morteza Nabavi as saying "The Court should answer to the public about Kadivar's arrest." Similar statements appeared in other dailies. Despite the public comment, however, Kadivar remained in prison as we went to press.
Yazdi threat: A second blow to Khatami was delivered by Judiciary chief, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, who threatened the President with removal from office if he did not put an end to press freedoms and insults to the Islamic Republic.
"We tell the President that as president, your first and prime duty is to apply and safeguard the Islamic Constitution," Yazdi told a Friday prayer audience on March 26. "Therefore, whenever you see a breach of the Constitution, you have to intervene. The Constitution says the press is free, but not to undermine Islam and the public's rights. Under law, the press does not have the right to talk and write against Islam, and if anyone does so, he will be arrested and brought to justice, regardless of his rank or position or personality," Yazdi said.
Yazdi was referring directly to Kadivar and his public criticism of the doctrine of clerical rule.
"Our people want Islam and nothing else," Yazdi went on. "Not what Voice of America or Radio Israel says and some newspapers repeat. There is no freedom for you to write and say anything you like. Our people do not want such freedom if it is against the tenets of Islam. Our institutions are here to observe, and they will take action when necessary and will not listen to what others say," he warned.
Yazdi noted that whenever a journalist is arrested and brought to court, there is a public outcry that the arrest is against the law. "But which law? What are the tenets of Islam? Who can tell me what are the fundaments of Islam? The Guidance Minister? His deputies? They who bestow awards on anti-Islamic so-called writers who know nothing about Islam How can they say who is harming Islam? They have no such competence," he said.
Montazeri's name banned: The Special Court for the Clergy also issued a ruling last month banning the mention of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri by the press, a direct challenge to Khatami's top advisor, former Interior Minister Abdallah Nouri, who has been publishing Montazeri's statements in his daily newspaper, Khordad. Montazeri has resurfaced over the past year as a charismatic opponent of absolute clerical rule, and has issued statements condemning the regime and calling for greater freedoms. The regime may fear that the press will build him into an alternative leader, much as the BBC built up Khomeini in 1978.
On the plus side, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance on March 16 issued a permit to Tehran's convicted mayor, Gholam Reza Karbaschi, to publish a new weekly newspaper to be called Ham-Mihan (Compatriot). Karbaschi threw all the resources of the Tehran municipality behind Khatami in the 1997 presidential campaign, which many Iranian observers believe is what led hard-liners to press for his conviction on corruption charges.