Theocracy or Democracy? The Choice Facing Khatami

Eric Rouleau is a former ambassador of France to Tunisia and Turkey. This article has been translated from the French by Linda Butler. An earlier version appeared in Le Monde Diplomatique on 30 May 2001.

Tehran was clearly celebrating that evening. It was a public holiday, so the shops, cafes, restaurants and American-style fast food outlets were closed, yet the main thoroughfares were clogged with countless automobiles crammed with entire families or, more often, with groups of teenagers. The strident honking of horns mingled with the din that rose from the human tide that flooded the streets and pavements. The crowd, for the most part young people, moved ahead slowly, while here and there small groups broke away, with boys and girls timidly striking up conversations. Many of the younger girls were not wearing the chador, as required by the precepts of a strict Islam, but long-sleeved coloured dresses instead. Their faces uncovered, some wore makeup, their “Islamic” scarves tied loosely so as to let escape a few locks of hair. Couples modestly held hands or linked arms, a sight that would have been unthinkable a few years back but which has lost its shock value in a country where mores have been continually evolving under the disapproving but resigned eye of the guardians of Islamic orthodoxy.

Suddenly the festivities turned violent. A horde of basij, urban militiamen, descended upon the crowd. Dressed in black trousers and shirts, black scarves around their necks, some on foot, others on motorscooters, they hurled themselves against the strolling crowd, beating people with clubs. Those who didn’t instantly disperse were arrested and bundled into police cars. By way of explanation, one of the militiamen shouted to an inquiring passerby: “These hooligans came here to flirt!”

The Iranians had been out that evening to commemorate ashura, the martyrdom of the Imam Hussein killed with a group of his supporters in the seventh century by the powerful army of the Caliph Omar, seen as a usurper. Hussein is venerated by all Shi’ite Muslims; his death symbolises supreme sacrifice in the struggle against tyranny and injustice. The day of national mourning is traditionally marked by scenes of collective self-flagellation in the morning and by processions of the faithful carrying candles in the evening. Clearly, the behaviour of these young Tehranis that evening did not conform to this pious tradition. One of the youngsters, spotting a foreigner in the crowd, called out: “We’re believers as much as these brutes! But they want to impose their dogmas on us and take away our smallest freedoms! And they’re right to think that our way of celebrating ashura is also, and especially, a demonstration against dictatorship!”

The clash, certainly, was exceptional. For some time an implicit “pact of non-aggression” has been observed between the young and the security forces: the young people refrain from actively opposing the theocratic system (avoiding, for example, strikes and demonstrations, which in recent years have ended in bloodshed) while the militias no longer interfere in people’s private lives. Thus, satellite dishes, forbidden by law, have proliferated from one end of the country to the other. Thus, too, the equally sacrilegious audio and video cassettes, for the most part of Western films and pop music, are sold in the streets, seemingly ignored by the militias. Nor do the basij intervene when the youngsters hold noisy parties in their homes, or even rock or pop concerts where black market alcohol is known to be served. It is as if the puritan establishment has resigned itself to a counter-culture impossible to eradicate without endangering civil peace. Indeed, half of Iranians are under eighteen, and three out of four are under thirty-five. It is the young people, particularly women, who have been responsible for the reformist victories in the various elections.

The Crackdown

The hardliners, then, have more or less abandoned the social front and concentrated on the political sphere. In particular, they have gone after the independent press, whose role became decisive during the period of grace that followed the reformer Mohammad Khatami’s first election as president in May 1997. Following that election, hundreds of publications—daily newspapers as well as periodicals dealing with political, cultural or social issues—were authorised, in keeping with the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution. Emboldened, journalists began to challenge the government and its dogmas. Taboos—and there were many—fell one by one. Eminent members of the clergy and philosophers were among those who defended “revisionist” positions calling for an Islam open to the concepts of individual rights, democracy and what amounts to secularism in all but name.

The conservative camp, which controlled the levers of power through Khatami’s first term of office and still remains entrenched since his re-election with 76.9 per cent of the vote on 8 June this year, unleashed measures of intimidation with little effect. A few newspapers were closed, but they immediately reopened under different names. Parliament, still dominated by hardliners, impeached and removed from office the interior minister, the progressive cleric Abdollah Nouri, but he was immediately replaced by a man hand-picked by the president. A series of political assassinations against opposition figures in the autumn of 1998 backfired: Khatami managed to force an investigation and the authors of the crimes, all members of the intelligence services, were tried and sentenced. There were even three death penalties, though as yet they have not been carried out. Taking advantage of the momentum, Khatami succeeded in having the minister of information (i.e., intelligence)—a loyal follower of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei—removed from office and replaced by a moderate. All this was unprecedented: political assassinations, often disguised as accidents or common law crimes, had become commonplace, but they had never before been acknowledged, much less punished.

The conservatives watched with alarm as Khatami chalked up gains during the first part of his first term; it was obvious that civil society was not giving ground despite their harassment of the increasingly unruly anti-establishment press. With the legislative elections of February 2000 drawing near, theocratic power seemed to be gradually eroding. The reformers had already scored two spectacular victories, winning 70 per cent of the vote in both the presidential elections of May 1997 and the municipal elections of February 1999. Hoping to skew the outcome of the legislative elections, the hardliners resorted to a number of measures (including disqualifying several prominent reformers from the race) but these, too, proved counter-productive. The reformers won a landslide victory that gave them two-thirds of the assembly seats. The conservative camp panicked. Without waiting for the runoff vote, they pushed legislation through the outgoing assembly where they still held the majority. In particular, they amended the press law to stipulate that banned publications could no longer reopen under different names and that journalists working for such publications could not be hired elsewhere. And when the new assembly with its reformist majority passed a bill repealing the amendments, the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, vetoed it on the grounds that the text was contrary to the precepts of Islam. The new majority found its hands tied.

The fourth and last year of Khatami’s first presidential term was marked, from spring 2000, by a campaign of repression unprecedented since Imam Khomeini’s death in 1989. Ayatollah Khamenei declared straight out that violence was legitimate in Islam if Islamic precepts were flouted. Earlier, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, the leader of the extreme right, had gone so far as to proclaim in his sermons that recourse to violence was “obligatory” if the Islamic Republic could not otherwise defend itself, “even if thousands of people must perish”. He also said that all good Muslims must on their own initiative “kill on the spot” any infidel who “insults Islam or the Prophet”.

The call to murder had not gone unheeded. Before the second round of voting in the legislative elections, a young student fired at point blank range on the reformers’ main electoral strategist, Said Hajjarian, adviser and personal friend of Khatami. Hit in the spine, Hajjarian is now confined to a wheelchair and his speech is permanently impaired. In a recent interview he mentioned with a smile the “solicitude” of the Supreme Leader, who received him this spring, a year after the shooting, to wish him a speedy recovery. Hajjarian explained that he had declined to ask for reparations from the perpetrator, as Islamic law allows, because he considered him a mere tool of the “dungeon of ghosts”. The expression, current among the opposition, refers to the mythical place from where powerful (and very real) individuals direct the campaign of terror.

Standing up to Blackmail

Along with the repression goes intimidation. Besides the permanent closing of some thirty publications, successive waves of arrests have targeted various categories of civil society: journalists, lawyers, academics, student leaders, publishers, members of the clergy, politicians. Charged, as the case may be, for their seditious activities, writings or declarations, some were sentenced to long prison terms following public or closed-door trials while others, not yet tried, are being held in secret confinement, their whereabouts unknown to their families and lawyers. Blindfolded, all the detainees are subjected to interminable and harsh interrogations and given the opportunity to make amends by “confessing” their crimes in front of television cameras.

Thus far no one has given in to such blackmail. On the contrary, all have affirmed their beliefs and their right to express them. Of the many who have been arrested, a few are worth mentioning. Hojatoleslam Hassan Yussefi-Eshkevari, a well-known theologian, was charged with apostasy for having defended the separation of mosque and state and affirming that the veil is not obligatory for women under Islam; he was condemned to death following a closed-door trial (though the sentence was overturned by the Court of Appeals). Mashallah Shemsol-Vaezin, the dynamic young editor-in-chief of a succession of banned dailies, published an article calling—in the name of Islam—for the abolition of the death penalty and is serving a thirty-month prison sentence while awaiting trial for other “crimes”. Akbar Ganji, a pious Muslim and the most popular of the reformist journalists, admired for his denunciations of “Islamic fascism”, was sentenced to ten years in prison after his latest book, Eminences Grises, described (without naming) various ayatollahs whom he accuses of having organised some one hundred political assassinations over the past decade (and whose names he revealed during his trial). In a recent surprise move, the Court of Appeals reduced his sentence to six months. Finally, Ezzatollah Sahabi, who is a septuagenarian with serious heart problems and a former member of the Revolutionary Council set up by Imam Khomeini in 1979, maintains in his writings that the revolution has been led astray by advocates of a totalitarian Islam.

As of the end of May 2001, Sahabi’s fate was still unknown, as is that of some sixty like-minded political figures of the so-called religious nationalist current arrested this spring. Tolerated until recently despite their long opposition to the theocratic system, these men have been accused of plotting to overthrow the regime, a crime punishable by death. Two political formations have been targeted. The Movement of Muslim Militants, in the social-democratic tradition, is led by Dr Habibollah Peyman, who has been arrested. The Freedom Movement is led by Dr Ibrahim Yazdi, a minister in the first post-revolution government, who was charged in absentia while undergoing cancer treatment in the United States. Yazdi has declared that he will appear before his judges as soon as his treatment ends.

The Source of Repression

The repression is orchestrated by the all-powerful judiciary, which is accountable only to the Supreme Leader even while functioning in a quasi-autonomous fashion. It has its own intelligence and police services as well as secret detention centres. Its agents assume the functions, simultaneously or by turns, of investigator, prosecutor and judge. It directs an array of so-called revolutionary courts, as well as courts handling clerical, press and common law cases. The accused are not always present at their “trial”, in which case a prosecutor or judge informs them in their cells of the sentence handed down.

The head of the judiciary is Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi who, when accused by the parliamentary majority of having violated the constitution and the laws in force, replied that only members of the clergy are entitled to interpret the texts. What he actually meant was that only his colleagues, for the most part clerics belonging to the Haqqani theological school in the holy city of Qom, were qualified to do so. Once a prestigious institution headed by relatively enlightened ayatollahs, the school in recent years has become a hotbed of obscurantists of the far right to whom a cleric referred in my presence as “the Iranian Taliban”. Their influence has spread throughout the entire state apparatus, including the office of the Supreme Leader and even the Kayhan media empire headed by a former member of the intelligence service, Hossein Shariat-Madari. A leading figure of the group, Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, is an apologist for violence and political assassinations who teaches at the Haqqani school.

Yet despite everything, the eminences grises no longer inspire fear. It is true that some more or less underground political activists take unusual precautions when speaking to visiting journalists. They avoid meeting in public places, turn off their cell phones and insist beforehand that their names not be used. But they are the exception. Journalists working in the independent press—seven dailies and numerous reformist publications survived the crackdown—do not hesitate to criticise the regime, albeit less aggressively than in the past. The political figures encountered, even those who are out on bail, speak with a surprising degree of assurance. The threatening declarations of high officials are for the most part greeted with derision or even outright laughter. The confidence of the reformers comes in large measure from their conviction that state violence further discredits the regime, and is doomed to fail.

On the other hand, on the eve of the June 2001 presidential elections, many of the reformers were worried about the repression’s impact on voters. There were fears that the repression, by seeming to confirm Khatami’s powerlessness to protect his own supporters, would swell the ranks of abstainers. The largest student organisation, with five hundred thousand members, publicly criticised the chief of state for his passivity, and slogans calling for his resignation were sometimes chanted at on-campus demonstrations. In the event, the turnout was only slightly down on that for 1997, and Khatami increased his share of the vote by over one million, winning re-election by a landslide.

Khatami’s increased majority was remarkable against the background of his poor economic record and its social consequences. Neither the unemployment rate (20 per cent according to some independent estimates) nor the inflation rate (17 per cent) decreased during Khatami’s first term. University graduates are resigned to getting lowly positions and dream of going abroad; last year, according to official figures, more than two hundred thousand Iranians, many of them professionals, left the country for good, joining some three million emigrés. Meanwhile, mental problems such as depression and schizophrenia have reportedly reached alarming proportions among the young, who are forced to lead double existences, divided between their “public” life dictated by the constraints of a puritanical Islam and their hidden life in keeping with a counter-culture practised in private.

Sociologists worry about the rising use of drugs, especially heroin, imported cheaply from Afghanistan (in all, Iran has more than two million identified drug addicts). Politicians of right and left deplore a dangerous polarisation among the country’s youth: at one extreme, a highly politicised segment, frustrated by the powerlessness of the reformers, urges a political activism to bring about radical change; at the other, an increasingly apolitical mass which reads little, watches light entertainment shows on international cable channels and listens only to foreign radio stations (the BBC, Voice of America, Radio Israel), reacts against the official propaganda and is not only indifferent to the anti-Zionist zeal of their leaders but harbours an unbridled admiration for the United States, seen as the epitome of freedom, culture and abundance.

Women’s Rights

Meanwhile women, who along with young people are the spearhead of the reformist movement, are waging a tireless campaign to improve their status. They note with bitterness that the parliament elected last year has fewer women than its predecessor (eleven out of 290 deputies, as against fourteen in the preceding conservative-dominated parliament); that the progressive parties and organisations are controlled by men; and that certain reformist leaders and parliamentarians treat them with condescension. “Some of them advise us to tone down our demands and be patient until we have a democracy,” I was told by two feminist leaders, Mahboubeh Abbas Gholizadeh, an Islamist militant, and Sarvanez Vafa, a die-hard secularist (though, for obvious reasons, she would reject the term). “These sexists,” Vafa adds, “forget that we elected them first and foremost to emancipate society.”

The two women nonetheless concede that, under pressure from the women’s movement, the parliamentary majority has adopted a number of laws aimed at reducing discriminatory practices pertaining to marriage, divorce and inheritance. These measures, however, were vetoed by the Council of Guardians, the body charged with verifying the “Islamic” validity of all legislation. “Our most urgent task,” they declare, “is to raise the legal marriage age of girls to fifteen, which is set by the sharia at eight years, nine months, which we consider a form of legalised paedophilia.”

The only difference between the two women involves the sharia: Gholizadeh believes it should be adapted to the demands of modern life because “God and his Prophet favour equality between the sexes”, while Vafa supports legislation founded on “reason” but “in keeping with spiritual values”.

The two activists nonetheless pay homage to President Khatami, who they believe is working sincerely for the advancement of women. His measures include naming a woman vice-president of the republic, creating within each ministry a department to look out for women’s interests, and the generous financing of dozens of women’s non-governmental organisations (NGOs), some of which he has involved in formulating the five-year plan for the economy.

A Mixed Record

While the leaders of the reformist movement rate Mohammad Khatami’s first presidential term as “positive overall”, in fact the record is mixed. On the foreign policy front, conservatives and reformers alike agree that it has been an unqualified success. A promoter of “dialogue between civilisations”, Khatami managed in less than four years to end state terrorism abroad, to disassociate the government from Imam Khomeini’s fatwa against the “apostate” writer Salman Rushdie, and to normalise relations with practically all the countries of the globe, from the member states of the European Union to the Gulf emirates, from Saudi Arabia to Cuba. There was even a certain thaw between Tehran and Washington, though diplomatic ties have not been restored. Meanwhile, President Khatami developed a close co-operation with Russia, which supplies Iran with arms and technological expertise for developing nuclear energy.

On the economic front, on the other hand, the president is criticised by all sides for a muddled policy that has satisfied neither the proponents of state capitalism nor the advocates of free enterprise. The absence of the rule of law, combined with a meddlesome and corrupt bureaucracy, has discouraged potential private investors, both foreign and local. The five-year plan, though well conceived, is being imperfectly implemented for want of competent personnel. Nor are there any illusions about the state of public finances: the $10 billion paid into the monetary reserves during the last fiscal year were generated by the hike in oil prices rather than economic performance, and the windfall contributed neither to the country’s development nor to improving social conditions.

Khatami’s neglect of economic questions derives from his conviction that economic and other reforms cannot be carried out until the regime is democratised. But it is precisely here that Khatami has failed. The theocratic institutions have remained intact even while the constitution’s liberal provisions have been systematically ignored or violated. Khatami complained of this last year to parliament, to which he addressed a report listing 120 flagrant violations of the Basic Law. Needless to say, it was a futile exercise, for while the constitution charges the president with ensuring that it is properly applied, it does not give him the power to intervene when it is contravened.

Paradoxically, Khatami is resolutely hostile to amending a constitution that he totally rejects in its present form. To restrain his supporters, he has declared that any attempt to modify it would be tantamount to treason. According to Mohammad Ali Abtahi, director of the president’s office, such an undertaking would have the opposite effect to that intended since the mechanism for revising the constitution is in the hands of the hardliners. Similarly, given the balance of power, the president opposes any grassroots action, which in his view could only work against the reformers. In taking such stands, has he doomed the movement for change to paralysis?

Ali Reza Khatami, the president’s younger brother and secretary-general of the Participation Front, which includes almost all the reformist parties, does not think so. “We have scored undeniable successes,” he maintains. “Civil society has begun to organise itself, numerous political formations have been legalised, some four thousand NGOs have been created, hundreds of independent publications have seen the light of day—seven hundred in the cities, one thousand in the provinces. For the first time in our history, we have held local and municipal elections, beginning a process of democratic decentralisation. We have become, in a way, a deterrent force, and time is on our side.”

Said Hajjarian, theorist and strategist of the reformist movement, is of the same view. “Cultural production,” he declares, “has quantitatively and qualitatively improved in all fields—film, theatre, literature. We have transformed the political climate to the point that our opponents feel obligated to adopt our vocabulary, referring to the supremacy of the law, pluralism, and respect for human rights. Now they invoke Divine Will only as a last resort.”

Similarly, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, the director of Khatami’s office, defends the president’s record. “We forget too easily,” he declares, “that we purged the ministry of information [i.e., intelligence] and have since prevented it from carrying out terrorist operations abroad and political assassinations at home, or even from assisting the judiciary and the so-called revolutionary courts. When you consider the gains, the price that we have paid—a hundred or so arrests, the closure of some thirty publications—is in our eyes relatively modest. In any case, we are confident that our adversaries will never succeed in holding back the torrent of modernity that is in the process of flooding the country.”

Hajjarian is more guarded. “We still have crucial tasks to do, such as giving our movement a unified leadership, a common strategy, and the means of changing the balance of power in our favour. World history has taught us that even revolutionary gains are not irreversible.”

If one takes into account the factors working against the reformers, Khatami’s record during his first term is not as negative as it might appear from outside. The obstacles include a constitution with both democratic and theocratic elements, but which gives the theocratic ones dominance in the management of the state; the weaknesses of a young reformist movement which, with eighteen different parties and organisations, seems incapable of forging a common strategy and leadership; and a president who seems satisfied to be the spokesman rather than the leader of the movement. For Khatami, a man without personal ambition, is above all a humanist intellectual with a passion for philosophy and moral issues who was propelled, virtually against his will, into a particularly complex and disconcerting political arena. In this sense, Ayatollah Khamenei was perhaps not wrong when, exasperated by “illusions fostered abroad”, he recently exclaimed that Iran is not the Soviet Union and that Khatami is not its Gorbachev.

Fearing a low voter turnout in the June elections, especially given the absence of a credible conservative candidate, the reformers tried to mobilise the population by widening the meaning of the race: it was not merely a presidential election, they said, but a “referendum”. They thus let it clearly be understood that the choice was fundamentally between democracy and theocracy. Quite a programme for Khatami’s second term.