The Majlis Chooses a Modest Man

And the "brazenfaced mullahs" consolidate their power

I am Imam Khomeini's follower, the parliament's child and Banisadr's brother." With that modest assessment of his qualifications, Mohammed Ali Raja'i last week accepted his election as Iran's Prime Minister. Raja'i, as Winston Churchill said about another man, has every reason to be modest. His meager government experience was limited to a ten-month stint as Minister of Education, a post in which he mainly presided over the closing of schools and universities in the name of "Islamization." President Abolhassan Banisadr, who is constitutionally responsible for nominating the Prime Minister, considered Raja'i headstrong, ill-informed and unfit for the job. In fact, the 47-year-old former mathematics teacher seemed to have had only one thing going for him: a fanatical attachment to the Islamic fundamentalism of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Nonetheless, that was enough to recommend Raja'i to members of the clergy-controlled Islamic Republic Party, which dominates Iran's parliament, the Majlis. That body approved Raja'i's nomination by the lopsided vote of 153 to 24, with 19 abstentions. Banisadr had stated publicly that he considered Raja'i a bad choice. But he finally bowed to clerical pressures and nominated Raja'i at the "recommendation" of a parliamentary commission controlled by the I.R.P. Explained a senior civil servant: "Khomeini was becoming impatient. It was obvious that the more brazen-faced mullahs would win."

Perhaps the most brazen of all the mullahs, Ayatullah Seyyed Mohammed Beheshti, thus consolidated his party's power and made good on a seven-month-old vow to reduce the popularly elected President to a figurehead. Even Banisadr's attempt to retain his constitutional veto rights over Cabinet appointments was rudely quashed by the mullahs. "The Prime Minister," insisted Beheshti, "must be free to choose anyone he deems fit for Cabinet positions."

Raja'i is unlikely to be much more than a front man for Beheshti and his clerical allies. The new Prime Minister is unimposing in person; he has no popular following and little apparent political savvy. Critics say that he is "headstrong" only when standing on firm ground. Arrested for distributing antigovernment literature in 1974, Raja'i is said by fellow inmates to have begged for mercy when tortured by SAVAK, the Shah's secret police. "His behavior at the time was certainly not heroic," notes one former prisoner. Students in his math classes at the Kamal Islamic high school in Tehran describe Raja'i as "inflexible" and "humorless," qualities that he appears to have brought with him into political life. He showed an awesome highhandedness as Minister of Education, for example, by disbanding the entire provincial school system in the rebellious western region of Kurdistan and firing 12,000 teachers. His reason: Communists had allegedly infiltrated the schools.

Raja'i's problems with the Kurds are likely to continue. There was renewed fighting in the strife-torn province last week; at least 155 autonomist rebels and 160 government troops were reportedly killed in clashes near the town of Baneh. Charging the Soviet Union and Iran's Communist Tudeh Party with supporting the Kurdish insurgents, Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh fired off a blistering letter to Moscow. The letter, one of Iran's strongest anti-Soviet statements to date, repeated a demand that the Soviet embassy staff in Tehran be reduced and angrily accused the Kremlin leadership of being "no less satanic than the U.S.A."

The outburst against Moscow in no way diminished the country's anti-American passions. One leading cleric, Seyyed Ali Khamenei, declared in a fiery sermon that "if this state of confrontation with the United States does not exist, our revolution will be deviated." The Majlis this week is expected to approve the Raja'i Cabinet, which technically will clear the way for a debate on the fate of the 52 U.S. hostages. There seems to be little hope for their immediate release, since most members of parliament want at least some of the hostages to be tried as spies.

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