Reuters

Alistair Lyon, Middle East Diplomatic Correspondent London,
Nov 19, 2002

Iranian students strengthen Khatami's reform hand

With the world's eyes riveted on Iraq, it's easy to miss the drama unfolding in next-door Iran over an academic condemned to hang after querying clerical rule.Yet this month's resurgence of student protest in his defence could be a turning-point in the five-year-old struggle between Iranian reformists and hardliners, analysts say.

"A new force may be emerging in Iran, less bound by the factional politics of the previous generation," said Baqer Moin, head of the BBC's Persian service.

Nearly quarter of a century after the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran was moving towards a gradual "reformation" that would limit the power of religion in state affairs, he said.

At the centre of the storm is war veteran and history lecturer Hashem Aghajari, who earlier this year said Muslims were not "monkeys" who should blindly follow the teachings of top clerics. After being sentenced to hang for blasphemy, he refused to appeal, saying he was ready to die for his beliefs.

That galvanised the politically dormant students, whose sustained campus protests prompted Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday to order a review of Aghajari's case. Having won one round against the hardliners entrenched in the judiciary and other key state bodies, the students may now stiffen reformist President Mohammad Khatami's resolve in a looming constitutional standoff with the conservatives.

Khamenei's intervention has yet to halt protests by students demanding free speech and the release of political prisoners. They clashed with the hardline Basij militia on Monday and some 3,000 Basijis staged an anti-reform demonstration on Tuesday.

STUDENT REVIVAL
"The whole notion that the reform movement had been crushed was mistaken," Ali Ansari, an Iranian lecturer in Middle East history at Durham University, said of the campus turbulence. Ansari said the students, who helped the reformists to win parliamentary polls in 2000, had been rocked by the judiciary's backlash against the pro-reform press and liberal thinkers.

They quit the streets after police and vigilantes crushed pro-reform protests in Tehran in 1999, but a mood of reappraisal had not quenched aspirations for a freer society, Ansari argued.

"The students regrouped in the summer, but they needed a cause to catalyse action. Aghajari's case came along as a very viable cause -- and a challenge to the reformists," he said.

Khatami's popularity has eroded in the five years since he was elected president on a reformist platform that has made little headway against determined conservative opposition.

His gentle approach has exasperated radical reformers, who want him to resign as part of a civil disobedience campaign if conservatives block two bills aimed at curbing the power of the judiciary and the veto-wielding Guardian Council.

Amir Ali Nourbaksh, an Iranian political analyst, said such a campaign would require unusual unity in the reformist camp to succeed, but could lead to a real crisis of legitimacy for the first time since the early years of the Islamic revolution.

He said the Aghajari case had exposed splits in conservative ranks, pitting pragmatists such as Khamenei and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani against hardliners who care little for considerations of national security or public opinion.

"Even some religious conservatives opposed the death sentence on Aghajari," he said.

DAMAGE CONTROL

It remains to be seen whether Khamenei's call for the sentence to be reviewed can control the damage.

"The pragmatic conservatives realised that the mistake had to be rectified because it was unifying disparate reform groups," said Moin, adding that the student unrest might worry some mainstream reformists as well as conservatives.

After all, Aghajari's critique reflects a sense that the Islamic system installed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's 1979 revolution has failed to solve Iran's problems.

"Politics is becoming profane," Moin said. "Imposing the logic of the state on religion, as Khomeini did, made religion answerable. The state he left behind can be questioned."

Hardline conservatives will have none of this. Some would relish a showdown that would let them crush the reform movement and keep hold of power, but only by dint of naked force.

Their more moderate colleagues recognise the dangers of such a course and see the value of keeping Khatami in power as a way of retaining political support at home and abroad.

"Neither side, conservatives or reformists, really wants a civil war," said Gary Sick, an Iran expert at New York's Columbia University, adding that the judiciary had "shot itself in the foot" by sentencing Aghajari to hang.
"Khamenei knows that getting rid of Khatami would risk a major backlash," he said.

"The more responsible reformers see calls for a new revolution as a disaster for Iran and the reform agenda. They have held things back successfully, but there are limits. Can this slow, unsatisfactory process get anywhere?"

© 2003 All Rights Reserved. Atieh Bahar Consulting.