War and Hardship in a Stern Land

By John Borrell

Banner headlines in Iraqi newspapers last Friday proclaimed WE DESTROYED KHARG ISLAND. The papers reported a "massive blitz" by Iraqi planes against the terminal, one of the world's largest, through which flow 90% of Iran's crude-oil exports of 1.6 million bbl. a day. If indeed Iraq had destroyed the terminal, it would have been a turning point in the five-year-old gulf war. By late last week, however, oil-industry experts concluded that although Iraqi jets had managed to penetrate the heavily defended southeastern, landward side of the complex known as "T terminal," the strike would not seriously disrupt the oil exports on which Iran's economy relies. Correspondent John Borrell recently spent nine days in Iran and came away with, among other impressions, the belief that Iran, under the rule of its Shi'ite Muslim theocracy, has not weakened in its resolve to carry on the war. His report on life in Iran today:

The Gohari family reunions take place in the Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery at the edge of the dusty Veramin plain on the outskirts of Tehran. Hussein Gohari, 14, squats next to the graves where his father Essa and his brothers Hassan and Ali lie, all killed in the conflict with Iraq. His mother, like many of the other widows at the cemetery, carefully washes her husband's gravestone, then sits with one hand on it in prayer. "We come every Friday," says Hussein. Soon his mother may be left alone to tend the graves. Hussein is ready, eager even, to join the war. "My mother doesn't want to lose me," he says, gazing steady-eyed at the sobbing woman. "But yes, I will go because I hate [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein and I want to avenge the deaths of my brothers and father."

This gathering of the living and the dead and the vows of vengeance have become a weekly ritual for Iranian families since the conflict with neighboring Iraq began to reap its harvest of victims, estimated at between 100,000 and 200,000. The graves at Behesht-e Zahra are tightly packed, sometimes no more than 6 in. apart, and they are advancing rapidly in tree-lined squares toward the perimeter of the 1.5-sq.-mi. cemetery. Aluminum-and-glass display cases contain photographs of the dead, many of them teenagers, along with family heirlooms. Most also bear a picture of the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, the octogenarian who guides Iran's side of the bloody campaign, as he does every other facet of life in Iran.

When Iraq launched its first air raids on Tehran three months ago, thousands of people fled to the surrounding countryside every night. But despite the continuing threat of high-level bombing runs, there is little about the city to suggest that it is the capital of a country at war. Streetlights are turned off at night but restaurants are crowded, and even when air raid warnings whine from radios, it seems that no one bothers to seek cover.

The war is only one hardship that presses in on Iranians. It is an irony of the Ayatullah's revolution that six years after the Shah's ouster, the average Iranian is no better off materially. And it would appear that the country has swapped one set of constraints on personal freedom for another. There is still abundant evidence of overcrowding and wretchedness. Two pounds of meat that cost just over a dollar in 1978 now costs $12 on the open market. Medical services have deteriorated, foreign travel is difficult.

But perhaps the greatest irony of all is that despite these harsh realities, Khomeini remains a revered, inspirational figure for Iran's masses. There are rumblings of discontent, but there seems no serious challenge to his conservative Shi'ite theocracy. There is little question either that the Islamic Republic will survive, if not flourish, after his death. The explanation lies in the application of a skillful mix of repression, which is being eased somewhat as the regime gains confidence, and the presenting of Islam as a unifying and controlling element in what remains a loose and still evolving political structure. "People may well be poorer than they were under the Shah," says a Western ambassador in Tehran. "But they feel they have won self-respect. That is very important psychologically. As long as the oil flows, the regime is secure."

The Imam, as Khomeini is now called, towers over Iran with all the power and prestige of Darius, one of the most famous of the pre-Islamic Persian kings. Khomeini's image is everywhere, painted in oils and hung in heavy frames in hotel lobbies and government buildings and vacant lots, and festooned in glossy photographs over thousands of martyrs' graves. Even his sayings are etched in brass and copper and hung in frames or daubed in paint on the sides of buildings. WHOEVER FIGHTS AGAINST THE TRUTH SHALL BE DEFEATED is one such framed homily, hanging in the baggage hall at Tehran's airport. A short distance away, a blunter sign, painted on the side of a hangar, reads DEATH TO AMERICA.

Although he is 85, Khomeini still regularly receives visitors at his modest but heavily guarded villa in the capital's northern suburbs. Even dignitaries must follow the procedure of removing shoes and sitting cross-legged in his presence. And while the twelve-man guardian council is constitutionally the state's supreme decision-making body, the Imam is without question the ultimate authority on everything from religious doctrine to the conduct of the war against Iraq. "He is more powerful than the Shah ever was," says an East bloc diplomat. "He sits very close to God in the eyes of most people."

But not, perhaps, in those of middle class Iranians, who have not been cowed or shorn of their natural bellicosity and are thus still suspect to many of the regime's leaders. They voice their criticism of the regime relatively freely, if privately. They crack jokes about the clergy, often at the expense of Ayatullah Hussein Ali Montazeri, Khomeini's heir apparent, who is regarded as pious but simple. "The clerics are making a mess of the economy," says a businessman who complains bitterly about the shortage of foreign exchange. "They should stick to preaching and let us run the economy."

There is a shortage of consumer goods as a result of strict import quotas, made necessary by declining oil revenues. Many factories are running at 40% or less of capacity because of a shortage of imported raw materials. Oil revenues are likely to be as low as $12 billion this year, down from $21 billion in 1983. But there is a flourishing black market that enables boutiques on Tehran's fashionable Vali-Asr Avenue to sell designer jeans for $120 a pair. Whisky can be found for $100 a bottle, despite the regime's strict ban on the use of alcohol.

In private homes, middle-class families watch American movies on smuggled videocassettes: Rambo--First Blood Part II is currently doing the rounds of Tehran's northern suburbs. Affluent Iranians eat at American-style fast-food restaurants, and despite the difficulties of getting an exit visa, even for an official fee of $500, many still vacation abroad. Says one Western diplomat in Tehran who has served in two East European capitals: "Things are a lot more open here than Eastern Europe."

Yet while the middle class is able to sidestep some of the regime's strictures in the privacy of their homes, the 150,000-strong Revolutionary Guard still enforces a strict public acceptance of dress regulations, particularly for women. All women, Iranians and foreigners alike, have to dress in Islamic fashion, which means either a dark, tentlike chador, or at least a long smock over a modest dress or trousers, with the head covered by a scarf. Even at holiday resorts on the Caspian Sea, where women once swam in bikinis, the rules are rigidly applied, and women are required to cover themselves from head to toe while swimming.

The activities of the Revolutionary Guards and neighborhood Islamic committees as sentinels of the new morality have been curtailed somewhat, and Khomeini has personally forbidden arbitrary searches of private homes. Even so, these watchdogs have considerable power. On one recent evening on the promenade at Bandar Anzali, a popular weekend getaway for Tehranis, five guards, three of them veiled women, drove in a Nissan van through the strolling crowds. A woman was stopped and told to roll down her three-quarter-length sleeves. Another was admonished for allowing a lock of hair to escape from under her scarf. Sometimes female guards carry cotton and cleansing cream and insist on helping transgressors remove their makeup.

The regime likes to blame much of what it regards as decadent behavior on Western influence, particularly that of the U.S. And there is no more powerful symbol of Iran's rigid stance before the outside world than the 25-acre American embassy compound at Ayatullah Talagani Street. Today it is in the hands of the Revolutionary Guards, its walls still daubed with the students' anti-American slogans.

Recent disclosures of Iranian efforts to make clandestine purchases of American weaponry and spare parts demonstrate that Iran's condemnation of the U.S. does not prevent it from coveting American technology. These covert attempts to secure what Iran's bellicose anti-Western policies prevent it from obtaining openly suggest one of the Islamic Republic's long-term weaknesses. Unlike the Shah, who tried to open up Iran to the West and turn it into an industrial power, Khomeini has turned the country back on itself. Science and technology are neither condemned nor encouraged. Admissions to the University of Tehran are down--partly the result of political vetting, which weeds out many of the best students--while admissions to theological colleges are up.

"Iran can buy its way out of the trouble its policies create for as long as the oil lasts," says one Western diplomat. "So perhaps Iran could survive religious medievalism for another 40 years." After that, and perhaps even long before, there seems little doubt that Iran will be forced to come to terms with the West, probably even with America itself.