LONDON: Members of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the biggest reformist bloc in the Iranian Majlis (Parliament), decided not to acknowledge the latest warning issued by the Tehran Justice Department. Its head, Abbas Ali Alizadeh, had threatened writers and legislators with arrest and prosecution if they continued to discuss in public the subject of Iranian-American relations, whether in the press or in parliamentary debates, which are relayed live by the parliamentary broadcasting service.
Iranian MPs saw the move as the opening shot in a “new battle” by their conservative opponents, aimed at denying them their last remaining bastions under the pretext of defending the “principles of the revolution” and the sanctity and authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
But while warning that the campaign would hurt both sides in the internal power struggle, they predict that the conservatives, and Khamenei himself, would emerge as the biggest losers.
Sources close to the pro-reform 2nd Khordad Coordination Council say consultations are under way between parliamentary leaders and Mohammed Ali Abtahi ­ President Mohammad Khatami’s chief adviser ­ about mounting a swift response to the conservatives’ latest offensive, which has the backing of Khamenei.
The reformists are outraged at what they perceive as the conservatives’ duplicity, accusing them of reneging on
an unwritten agreement that was struck, with Khamenei’s blessing, by Khatami, the speaker of Parliament, and the head of the judiciary, just before the Iranian New Year holidays in March.
As heads of the executive, legislative and judicial branches, respectively, the three men agreed to work together to establish an appropriate basis for building national accord between the various forces within the regime. The principal objective was an accommodation between the reformists, who enjoy strong public backing and control the government and Parliament, and the conservatives, who despite lacking broad grassroots support wield immense influence via the judiciary, the security agencies and the Revolutionary Guards ­ and on whom Khamenei relies.
Thus, on the eve of the holiday, the judiciary freed some 40 jailed political activists and four writers associated with the pro-reform religious-nationalist current. Chief Justice Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, who is close to Khamenei and the conservatives, also suspended a number of indictments issued against reformist legislators and journalists.
Reformists welcomed these moves as evidence that the national accord plan was being translated into practice. But the honeymoon between the two sides was very brief.
The explanation offered by the political editor of Nowruz ­ the reformist newspaper whose publisher, leading Tehran MP Mohsen Mirdamadi, was recently handed a six-month jail sentence and banned from running newspapers for five years ­ is that back in March the conservatives felt insecure and apprehensive as a result of the Bush administration’s anti-Iranian diatribes. They thus sought to use the good regional and international standing of Khatami and the reformists to counter the threats coming from the US.
In his Jan. 29 State of the Union address naming Iran as part of his “axis of evil,” US President George W. Bush was quite specific in attacking the “unelected few” who “repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom,” the Nowruz editor pointed out. “Everyone knows who the unelected few are,” he said, observing that after Bush spoke, senior administration officials repeatedly indicated that America respects Iran’s elected institutions but opposes its hard-liners.
Thus, the pillars of the conservative establishment, appreciating that it was they who were being targeted by the Bush administration, opted to reconcile with Khatami and the reformists so as to portray the regime as being united and at peace with itself. Hence, the national accord project which Khatami and his loyalists welcomed, and which the reformist press hailed as signaling the re-launch of his reform program ­ this time with the blessing of all forces within the regime.
Khatami was never directly targeted in the US propaganda campaign against Iran. On the contrary, American officials spoke highly of his efforts to ease Iran out of its regional and international isolation and to democratize its political system. Yet the president took the lead in countering American
attacks on Khamenei and the conservative “unelected few,” to demonstrate his loyalty to the regime and its supreme leader and to convey an impression of harmony between its rival factions.
Subsequent regional developments ­ notably Israel’s war on the Palestinians ­ meant that by the time the holiday period ended in early April, the threat of an imminent American offensive on Iraq, the anticipated precursor to action against Iran, had receded. The diplomatic campaign waged by Khatami ­ who visited Austria, Greece and Central Asia while dispatching ministers, officials and parliamentary delegations to numerous world capitals ­ bolstered Iran’s position in the face of threatened American action against it.
Apparently, Khatami’s success in this regard encouraged Khamenei and his team to resume their offensive against the reformists, in the belief that they no longer needed to compromise and coexist with them. They had been used to help safeguard the regime against an external threat and now that the threat seemed to be over, they could be subjected to the big stick once again.
Last week, Nowruz published an article titled An Illusion Called National Accord, attacking not the conservatives, but the reformist “simpletons” who had allowed themselves to be duped. “Khatami and the reformists saved the regime from danger and now they are being targeted by those who two months ago were feeling frightened and alarmed by the American threats,” it remarked.
These developments, according to one Tehran MP, signal nothing short of a “final and irrevocable divorce between the two wings of the Iranian regime,” and promise to put the country to a “severe test.”
Having shown “tolerance, forbearance and patience” toward Khamenei and the conservatives for five years, Khatami has now decided to confront them, the Tehran MP says.
This is underlined both by the reformist MPs’ decision to reject Alizadeh’s warning and by Khatami’s recent threats to resign and his statements that Iranians want a religious democratic republic as opposed to a one-man religious dictatorship.
Legislators are also seeking a mechanism ­ a referendum if necessary ­ to reduce the supreme leader’s powers and enhance those of the elected president. This suggests that the conflict between reformists and conservatives, which began after Khatami was first elected to office in May 1997, is not going
to remain confined to the two camps’ foot soldiers ­ be they in Parliament, the media or
the universities.
Rather, their respective generals seem poised for a final reckoning. The outcome of that battle will determine whether Iranians are to be governed by an elected president or a supreme jurisprudent who, in the words of the head of the Council of Experts, Ali Meshkini, is “appointed by God.”

Ali Nourizadeh, one-time political editor of the Tehran daily Ettelaat, is an Iranian researcher at the London-based Center for Arab-Iranian Studies and the editor of its Arabic-language newsletter, Al-Mujes An-Iran

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