Last week Iran seemed poised on the brink of something big - either the dawn of a new era of hard-line repression or a historic victory for the people. For seven years, reformists and conservatives had shared power - albeit unequally - by presiding over competing branches of government. But in recent weeks, the part of government voted in by a majority of Iranians, the reformist half, rebelled against the part that nobody voted for: the conservative clerics who hold all the levers of power.
The conservatives stole the upcoming parliamentary election by disqualifying nearly a third of candidates, and the reformists demanded that they give it back. Faced with mass resignations among reformists, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei intervened on their behalf.
For a few hours, it seemed that Iran's reformists, and popularly elected President Mohammad Khatami, had finally won a battle. But it was not to be. When all was said and done, the hard-line Council of Guardians succeeded in disqualifying more than 2,000 of the 8,144 Iranians who wanted to run for Parliament. Thanks to the reformists' outcry, the blacklist comprised a mere 26 percent of candidates instead of the 43 percent the council originally vetoed.
Khatami and his allies could have followed through on their earlier threats and staged a mass walkout. They would have robbed Iran's government of its only shred of legitimacy, revitalized the reform movement - and left the field clear for the conservatives to do as they wished without anyone shining a light on their activities.
Demonstrations might have followed, forcing the hard-line regime to either cede power or resort to brute force. Given the entrenched nature of Iran's clerical rulers, the likelihood of them ceding power was slim. Much more likely that the prisons would have welcomed new inmates and the cemeteries new mourners.
Instead, the reformists chose to compromise. In Parliament, 130 of the 290 members resigned. In doing so, they gained credibility among voters and lost nothing - their legislative agenda was routinely vetoed by the Guardians anyway.
But President Khatami and his government - the Cabinet ministers and 27 governors who had also threatened to resign - stayed to stage the tainted election they'd so vigorously denounced. Nor did Khatami urge a boycott such as that launched by his brother, Mohammad-Reza Khatami, one of the disqualified candidates and the leader of the largest reformist party.
Instead, the president celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Islamic Republic with this warning: "Elections are a symbol of democracy if they are performed correctly. If this is restricted, it's a threat to the nation and the system."
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Once again, the Islamic Republic demonstrated the costs and benefits of compromise. Change was sacrificed, stability was maintained. Hope was dimmed, unrest was averted. Having lived through one revolution, even the most disgruntled Iranians aren't interested in another one. The status quo prevailed, with reformists and conservatives sharing power in an unequal tug-of-war which is the closest Iran has been able to come to democracy.
In staying, Khatami further tarnished his reputation among the people who voted overwhelmingly for him in high-turnout elections in 1997 and 2001. Iranians, who are mostly young and educated, see him nowadays as at best impotent, at worst a Neville Chamberlain colluding in the repression of popular aspirations.
But the president also prevented a return to the days when conservatives controlled all aspects of life in Iran. The reformists may be impotent, but their role in government provides the closest thing to accountability possible in a country where the military, radio and television and the courts are controlled by hard-liners and Parliament can be routinely thwarted by the Council of Guardians.
A case in point is last year's death of a Canadian photojournalist in an Iranian jail. While one branch of government claimed Iranian-born Zahra Kazemi had died of a stroke, another branch, controlled by Khatami, exposed her murder in custody. Khatami initiated an inquiry, but it is unclear that the real culprits will ever be punished. The case demonstrates both the powerlessness of Khatami's government and its vital role as a whistle-blower. The greatest accomplishment of the reformists continues to be an increased capacity to shine the light in formerly dark corners of the Islamic Republic.
It is a capacity sustained by the continued licensing of reform publications which thumb their nose at conservatives, apparently undeterred by the hard-line judiciary's penchant for imprisoning journalists. Last week, for example, Khatami's deputy minister for press affairs deflected - at least temporarily - a complaint from the judiciary about eight reformist publications which were going too far with their election reporting. According to Iran's official news agency, the deputy minister, Mohammad Sahfi, said the newspapers were just doing their job.
Iran is no longer the land of the mullahs, but a place where the tired slogans of revolution have become an anachronism. Even conservatives now question the central axis of the Islamic Republic: the Velayat-e-Faqih, or supreme jurisprudent.
The current faqih, 65-year-old Khamenei, presides over a country where 70 percent of the populace are under the age of 25; where the literacy rate has doubled among both men and women; where most rural households have television sets and in the cities Internet cafes and cell phones are the norm. For Iranians today, politics is upstaged by social and economic issues - drug addiction and the spread of prostitution, joblessness and economic obstacles to marriage, 20 percent unemployment and a hunger for all things Western.
The schism between the people and the rulers is an ever-widening one, and even many conservatives seem to realize that their only hope of bridging it is the reform movement. Hard-core clerics resist this reality at their own risk, and Khamenei's repeated intervention in the electoral crisis suggests that he is cognizant of this fact. As events played out, it was not the supreme leader but the Council of Guardians that contravened the will of the people. Whether this is spin, or evidence of a schism among conservatives, hardly matters. In either case it suggests that Khamenei can read the writing on the wall.
In the last parliamentary elections, the Council of Guardians disqualified 9 percent of candidates and ended up with a reformist Parliament. This time, nothing short of mass disqualifications could ensure what is widely expected to be a conservative-dominated Parliament.
But with the desire for change so profound in Iran, even the all-powerful Guardians can't be sure that they've avoided a cuckoo in the nest. After all, the Guardians approved Khatami's candidacy. There is no guarantee that one of their candidates of choice won't prove to be the next standard-bearer for reform, another insider who perceives change as a condition of survival.
No matter how many elections they win, Iran's hard-liners are fighting a losing battle.
- Gelareh Asayesh is the author of Saffron Sky: A Life Between Iran and America. She grew up in Tehran, Iran.
