Old Iran... ...Vs. New

By Scott Macleod/Tehran

When their soccer heroes scored a 2-1 triumph and thereby killed U.S. hopes in the World Cup, Iranians flooded into the streets and whooped and hooted until dawn. No "Death to America" this time. In fact, a few Cup-crazed fans raced their cars up and down Valiasr Street, Tehran's main drag, with the American flag fluttering out the window. One reveler even cried out, within earshot of the bearded morality police who kept a disapproving watch on the fun, "We love America!"

Playing in the international soccer championship, partying in the streets, putting old grudges to rest? Yes, outcast and uptight Iran is changing. Slowly, for sure, but certainly faster than anyone could have imagined just one year ago. Since the surprise 1997 election of Mohammed Khatami, who in Iranian terms is a moderate, a fierce internal battle has begun, with the stakes being the future of the mullah-led theocracy.

The turbaned former philosophy professor has set the country on a new course toward greater freedom, respect for the rule of law and "a dialogue of civilizations." He wants an Iran where the people, not just the Shi'ite Muslim mullahs, have their say. Small wonder that friends and foes alike refer to him as Ayatullah Gorbachev.

One hallmark of Khatami's campaign for change is his very tentative effort to create a less hostile relationship with the American "Great Satan." Last January he called for cultural exchanges aimed at breaking down the "wall of mistrust" between Tehran and Washington. When Secretary of State Madeleine Albright finally delivered a full-blown response to Khatami two weeks ago, calling on Iran to explore further confidence-building steps and draw a road map to "normal relations," it was the most conciliatory tone on Iran to come out of Washington since Khomeini's revolutionaries held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days in 1979-81.

But the old-line mullahs, led by the Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, are determined to blunt the new President's reformist efforts. Conservative-controlled state radio immediately dismissed Albright's olive branch as nothing new, demanding that the U.S. apologize for a half-century of wrongs toward Iran. In a domestic power struggle that has intensified in the past month, the hard-liners have put the moderate mayor of Tehran on trial on corruption charges, ousted a key Khatami Cabinet minister and ordered the closure of a new liberal newspaper licensed under the President's pledge of greater press freedom. "What we are seeing," says Tehran University political scientist Nasser Hadian, "is a fight for the soul of Iran."

Khatami's problem is that while he won the hearts of the people with a remarkable 70% of the popular vote, hard-liners retained all the instruments of state power: control of the army, the police and the courts, as well as the terrorist elements that have caused mayhem abroad. The fundamentalists also continue to hold a majority in the 270-member Iranian Parliament.

As the relatively wild soccer celebrations showed, the children of the revolution in particular are desperate for Khatami to succeed. Seconds after the game was over, they began pouring into the streets by the thousands, performing rituals of public joy that would have got them arrested in everyday circumstances. Teenagers played rock music at full volume on their car tape decks and hopped out to boogie in the streets. Young women hung outside the windows of streaking cars and let their dark tresses flow outside their compulsory head scarves, unchaste behavior to the mullahs.

On several occasions, small crowds boldly confronted policemen who tried to interfere with the fun. "You think you have power just because you have a walkie-talkie!" yelled a young man on a motorcycle, boldly taunting a bearded fundamentalist from the basij, a volunteer force responsible for upholding strict Islamic conduct. "You see how happy we are," said Vaheed Aghani, 20, born the year before Khomeini came to power, who was wearing a Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirt. "Why should the government try to stop us?" Among the revelers was Ibrahim Yazdi, Khomeini's first Foreign Minister, ousted by Islamic militants after the U.S. embassy takeover. "After 20 years of having these feelings suppressed," he said gleefully as he surveyed the crowds, "people are making the most of this opportunity."

Even before the soccer celebration, signs of Khatami's new Iran were increasingly visible. Cinemas are showing Hollywood films such as Seven, starring Brad Pitt, who has become a favorite heartthrob in Iran. Titanic is a huge black-market hit, available only on pirate videos smuggled from New York City and Los Angeles. Boys are walking around sporting Leonardo DiCaprio T shirts, and girls are plastering their bedrooms with the teen idol's picture. Women are for the first time exposing polished toenails in public.

The changes are not only cosmetic. Khatami has permitted the founding of dozens of new daily newspapers and weeklies, some of which are tackling once taboo topics like Khomeini's shortcomings and the need for better relations with the U.S. Khatami's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance has unbanned scores of books, like Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and stopped requiring Iran's film directors to submit their scripts for advance approval. Students have been granted permits for demonstrations to protest the bullying tactics of Muslim hard-liners and even the validity of Islamic government.

Maybe the most remarkable change is in the nation's official rhetoric, so memorably filled with anti-U.S. invective when Khomeini was alive. On the first anniversary of Khatami's election last month, tens of thousands of supporters crammed into an outdoor theater at Tehran University to hear a speech by the President. They cheered and stamped their feet, shouted, "Khatami, we love you!" and denounced the conservative mullahs in Qum as "Taliban," an insulting allusion to the ultra-fundamentalists governing neighboring Afghanistan. When a small section of hard-line students began yelling "Death to America!" the President reprimanded them, declaring "In this gathering, I prefer that we speak about life, not death." The majority in the audience cheered.

If Khatami has his way, more than the tone will change. Since taking office a year ago, he has moved cautiously to create a multiparty political system and dilute the power of the Council of Guardians, a 12-member body, controlled by the Supreme Leader, that has helped entrench conservative domination. Khatami's objectives are to capture control of the Parliament in elections set for the year 2000 and win a second four-year term as President in 2001.

The mullahs have no intention of letting that happen. Hard-liners told TIME their strategy is to ignore Khatami's overwhelming popular mandate, frustrate his political reforms and then make election hay out of Khatami's handling of economic matters. They calculate that no matter what Khatami does, with the price of oil dropping, Iran's petroleum-based economy is unlikely to rebound quickly from a sluggish 0.5% growth rate and a 9% unemployment rate. And thus far, Khatami and his advisers have evinced no ability to reform the corrupt and patronage-heavy economic machinery of the country. "Being the incumbent can be a liability," smiles conservative member of Parliament Mohammed Javad Larijani. "We don't plan on giving anybody a free ride."

The latest move by the hard-liners came last week, when the Iranian Parliament voted to remove Interior Minister Abdollah Nouri. The hard-liners complained that he had stoked tensions by authorizing protest demonstrations. But they also objected to Nouri's moves to replace conservatives with moderates in key ministry posts.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the move came three months prior to elections, when Iranians will choose a new 83-member Council of Experts, the body with the power to appoint and remove a Supreme Leader. Khamenei, 59, who succeeded Khomeini as spiritual chief in 1989, has been suffering from an undisclosed ailment. Election maneuvering seems to explain, at least partly, the corruption trial of another Khatami ally, popular Tehran Mayor Gholamhossein Karabaschi. The President was counting on him to help deliver a parliamentary majority in two years.

For many Iranians, the most discouraging blow to Khatami's efforts came two weeks ago, when a conservative-controlled court ordered the closure of Jameyeh, the four-month-old pro-Khatami newspaper. When news of its shutdown spread, a Khatami deputy minister rushed to visit the editors afterward, but there was little he could offer except sympathy.

Those around the President fear that someday the hard-liners may resort to extremes, including an outright putsch, to block democratization. That could trigger a return to the factional bloodletting that left Iran in chaos in the revolution's early days. Already conservatives have sent bearded thugs from Ansar Hizballahi, a militant fundamentalist group, to break up student demonstrations authorized by Khatami's Interior Ministry.

Considering the dangers, Iranians are disappointed but not surprised that Khatami moves so gingerly. "We are waiting for the President to react to the hard-liners, but he remains silent," says a distinguished Tehran book publisher. "We worry about losing hope. We worry about the dark shadow that may be coming."

During a two-hour interview with TIME, conducted in a Shah-era palace thick with carpets and chandeliers, a senior presidential adviser frankly acknowledged Khatami's limitations. "We have not completely set up the society that we intend," said Mohammed Ali Abtahi, Khatami's chief of staff. "But we have started down this path. We have an arduous but not impossible task." Abtahi asserted that liberalization is irreversible, adding that the only question was whether it will be Khatami or a successor who completes it.

Given that two-thirds of Iranians are under age 25 and demanding an Iran at peace with itself and the world, he may turn out to be correct. Consider a small moment that occurred during last week's euphoria. At one point, a fundamentalist grabbed an American flag that was being waved by revelers and knelt down with a cigarette lighter to set it ablaze. Suddenly a boy ran past, snatched it away and disappeared into the crowd. A young Iranian had rescued the Stars and Stripes.