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If he has been relatively successful in his recent forays intoforeign policy, President Khatami has had less luck back home, wherehard-liners continue to threaten him - at times, physically.
On February 27, the Special Court of the Clergy arrested one-timeKhatami advisor Hojjat-ol eslam Mohsen Kadivar, after he hadpublished a series of articles criticizing clerical rule (Velayat-eFaqih). Reuters reported on 2/21 that Kadivar had been summoned forquestioning by the Special Court of the Clergy, established byAyatollah Khomeini only weeks before his death to conduct secrettrials of members of the clergy accused of offensives against theIslamic Republic.
Kadivar was accused of slandering clerical rule and questioningthe existence of the Special Court, and has demanded an open trialand the right to lawyers of his own choice.
Kadivar also happens to be a brother-in-law of AtaollahMohajerani, the reformist Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidancewho has been a primary target of the hard-liners, who criticize hisefforts to allow greater press freedom. A sister, Jamileh Kadivar,was the top female vote-getter during the Local Council elections inTehran last month, and ran on a reformist ticket.
Reformist groups had planned to hold demonstrations demandingKadivar's release in early March, but postponed them so not tointerfere with Khatami's trip to Italy.
But Kadivar's arrest also angered conservative and even hard-lineclerics, who accused the Special Court of the Clergy of oversteppingits bounds. Even the government's Islamic Human Rights Commission,which is named by the Majlis, denounced the Court for failing toexplain why Kadivar had been jailed, and for preventing members ofthe Commission from visiting him in Evin jail.
Posters supporting Kadivar's release from jail sprouted up allover Tehran the day he was arrested, and Iranian dailies have widelycondemned the arrest. The pro-Khatami Hamshahri quoted moderatecleric Ayatollah Abdol-Karim Musavi-Ardebili as expressing "regret"over the arrest, while Sobh-e Emrouz quoted Conservative Majlisdeputy Morteza Nabavi as saying "The Court should answer to thepublic about Kadivar's arrest." Similar statements appeared in otherdailies. Despite the public comment, however, Kadivar remained inprison as we went to press.
Yazdi threat: A second blow to Khatami was delivered by Judiciarychief, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, who threatened the President withremoval from office if he did not put an end to press freedoms andinsults to the Islamic Republic.
"We tell the President that as president, your first and primeduty is to apply and safeguard the Islamic Constitution," Yazdi tolda Friday prayer audience on March 26. "Therefore, whenever you see abreach of the Constitution, you have to intervene. The Constitutionsays the press is free, but not to undermine Islam and the public'srights. Under law, the press does not have the right to talk andwrite against Islam, and if anyone does so, he will be arrested andbrought to justice, regardless of his rank or position orpersonality," Yazdi said.
Yazdi was referring directly to Kadivar and his public criticismof the doctrine of clerical rule.
"Our people want Islam and nothing else," Yazdi went on. "Not whatVoice of America or Radio Israel says and some newspapers repeat.There is no freedom for you to write and say anything you like. Ourpeople do not want such freedom if it is against the tenets of Islam.Our institutions are here to observe, and they will take action whennecessary and will not listen to what others say," he warned.
Yazdi noted that whenever a journalist is arrested and brought tocourt, 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 whatare the fundaments of Islam? The Guidance Minister? His deputies?They who bestow awards on anti-Islamic so-called writers who knownothing about Islam How can they say who is harming Islam? They haveno such competence," he said.
Montazeri's name banned: The Special Court for the Clergy alsoissued a ruling last month banning the mention of Grand AyatollahHossein Ali Montazeri by the press, a direct challenge to Khatami'stop advisor, former Interior Minister Abdallah Nouri, who has beenpublishing Montazeri's statements in his daily newspaper, Khordad.Montazeri has resurfaced over the past year as a charismatic opponentof absolute clerical rule, and has issued statements condemning theregime and calling for greater freedoms. The regime may fear that thepress will build him into an alternative leader, much as the BBCbuilt up Khomeini in 1978.
On the plus side, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance onMarch 16 issued a permit to Tehran's convicted mayor, Gholam RezaKarbaschi, to publish a new weekly newspaper to be called Ham-Mihan(Compatriot). Karbaschi threw all the resources of the Tehranmunicipality behind Khatami in the 1997 presidential campaign, whichmany Iranian observers believe is what led hard-liners to press forhis conviction on corruption charges.