“He still regrets accepting the nomination,” a close associate of Khatami’s tells NEWSWEEK. “He couldn’t turn people down. He was their only choice.” Ironically, Iran’s president may also be the best hope the rest of the Muslim world has, at least in the year ahead, for a leader who can reconcile modern democracy and Islamic culture. If Khatami gets his way, the country that begot the modern fundamentalist state–and first demonized America as the “Great Satan”–may even offer the most promising way out of the Islamic extremism that is America’s No. 1 enemy. Although deep conflicts with Washington remain over Iran’s past support for terrorism and its ongoing nuclear program, Khatami continues to turn toward the West, and his relations in Europe are improving steadily.
The problem is that Khatami, for the moment, finds himself stymied by the defenders of the faith. His supporters go to the polls by the millions every chance they’re given because they think democracy really means something, and their ballots can change their futures for the better. “Iran today is much more alive than any Arab country, more vital than any political model in the Arab world,” says Jordanian political scientist Mustafa Hamarneh. Yet Khatami and his sympathizers have been blocked and brutalized by Ayatollah Khomeini’s political heirs, hard-liners around Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who still control the courts, the security forces and the paramilitary militias known as Basij. Through a 12-member Council of Guardians they can veto any law passed by the reformist Parliament.
What the people want they don’t get, at least when the hard-liners have their way. Since Khatami’s re-election, the Guardians have overruled legislation protecting foreign investment in Iran’s ailing economy, the right of women to study abroad and a liberal new press law that would have allowed banned newspapers to start publishing again. The hard-liners may also try to provoke confrontations with the West. Former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani called the suicide bombers in Israel “selfless martyrs who go to heaven and ride on the wings of angels.”
Even so, the mullahs’ attempts to keep alive the flame of Islamic revolution look increasingly desperate. Many of the dissidents they are now jailing are those who once took to the streets to support Khomeini. Iran’s young people, the core of Khatami’s political base, are keeping the faith in their president. So are women, who see him as key to their gradual liberation. “No one can even think about going back to the pre-Khatami period,” says student activist Farzaneh Zamani. “Reformism has become part of our political psyche. It’s very difficult for the hard-liners to understand it because, like any other authoritarian country, the rulers have become a breed apart from the society.” Khatami’s task is to edge Iran toward reform while showing these rulers just how out of touch they are–and to keep his job while doing so.
