The country's peaceful reform movement could come to an end if President Mohammad Khatami fails to regain control and hold legitimate elections.
Published February 6, 2004
Iran's reformist government is in crisis. The nation's hard-line clerics are attempting to roll back democratic gains and return the country to rigid conservative rule. The unelected Guardian Council, the body that vets candidates and new laws, has rigged an upcoming parliamentary election by disqualifying thousands of reformist candidates, including 87 incumbents. The reformist government of President Mohammad Khatami is refusing to stage elections unless all candidates are allowed to run.
Iran is facing a pivotal moment. It could determine whether Iran will live under a democratic government or hard theocratic rule. If Khatami and democratic reformists fail to regain control and hold legitimate elections, the reform movement could be over - at least in its peaceful form - and Iran's hard-line religious leaders will have demonstrated that the nation's apparatus of self-rule is an elaborate fiction.
Iran's young and restive population has been agitating for years to come out from under the repressions of the country's unelected clerics. The people want a freer press, a more independent judiciary and greater power for elected officials - yearnings that have translated into stunning successes for reform parties and candidates at the ballot box.
Seven years ago Khatami was elected president over a candidate preferred by hard-liners, and in 2000 reformists won a parliamentary majority. But even with this popular mandate, little has changed. The mullahs, who control the courts, the police, and all matters of state, have gone unchallenged when they jail dissenters or shutter newspapers critical of their actions. The reforms promised by those elected in landslides haven't come about because the government has been reluctant to confront the power of the nation's religious leaders.
Something had to give. Khatami could not ignore the undemocratic actions of the powerful Guardian Council. The group of hard-line clerics, appointed by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, disqualified 2,400 reformist candidates - about a third of those standing for elected office - who were to participate in parliamentary elections on Feb. 20. The move was a blatant power grab, designed to ensure that conservatives recaptured the legislative body.
In response, more than 120 reformist members of Parliament resigned and Khatami's government declared that it would not hold the elections. Negotiations ensued and it appeared earlier in the week that a compromise had been reached. Khamenei ordered the Intelligence Ministry, not the Guardian Council, to review the disqualifications, and it was anticipated that most candidates would be reinstated. But that deal unraveled when the Guardian Council refused to forward the newly approved names to the Interior Ministry.
It's difficult to know how this crisis will play out. The outcome could cripple Iran's nascent reform movement, or the nation's secular leaders could win this game of chicken and force some accountability on the clerics, a far preferable resolution from a human rights perspective.
Despite a quarter century of ill will, Iran and the United States have been inching recently toward a diplomatic shift. The two countries have a grab bag of congruent interests in Afghanistan and Iraq - both want to see a stable Iraq and stop Afghan heroin from being smuggled across Iran into Europe. And when, in December, Iranian leaders agreed to surprise inspections by the United Nations to verify that they were not producing nuclear weapons, tensions between Washington and Teheran eased measurably.
With the government of Khatami in crisis and the future of Iran's democratic institutions in doubt, it will be difficult for the United States and Iran to re-engage diplomatically in the short run. A stable Iran moving toward Western-style reforms is in our interest and in the interest of the Iranian people. Watching from the sidelines, Americans can only hope the reformists prevail.
