Divisions: Khatami's big hurdle

By Farshid Motahari

TEHERAN (DPA): For the first time in Iran's post-revolution history, a presidential term has started with heated internal tensions stemming from what observers regard as irreconcilable differences between the reformists close to President Mohammad Khatami and hardliners within the conservative opposition.

According to the country's leading reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF), it can be said that the judiciary is the main pillar of the system in Iran and hence beyond criticism, and that the parliament and the government are apart from the system and thus open to be insulted and humiliated.

The efforts by Khatami and the reformists to move the country towards an internationally acknowledged status as a civil state are constantly blocked by the establishment's conservative clergy, who control the judiciary, leading a Teheran scholar to describe these attempts as equivalent to being on a Sisyphus path.

"The conservatives first took President Khatami as a constitutional hostage and delayed his swearing-in ceremony (due to a constitutional dispute), and just after the oath they closed down our daily," an IIPF member said.

The leading reformist daily, Hambastegi (Solidarity), was closed by the judiciary hours after Khatami's swearing-in, which itself was delayed for three days after reformist had refused -- before eventually giving in -- to approve new members of the senate-like Guardian Council, another body dominated by the conservatives.

Hambastegi had carried an interview with reformist MP Rassul Mehrparvar, who accused the judiciary head, Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi-Shahrudi, of not being concerned about the destiny of Iran due to his Iraqi origins.

The judiciary has established one special department to deal solely with reformists, and the slightest criticism is regarded as sufficient for conviction, the IIPF, which is headed by the president's brother, Mohammad-Reza Khatami, and has a majority in the parliament, said in a statement released after start of Khatami's second term.

Khatami himself at the start of his second term displayed little of his usual diplomatic pose and warned hardliners that imposing narrow-minded perspectives and spreading violence under the pretext of religion was very likely to cause a move towards unfaithfulness and laicism.

The judiciary chief and the members of the Guardian Council are the main targets of the reformist camp, but as appointed officials of the establishment, they are constitutionally untouchable and also enjoy the support of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The reformists are accused by hardliners of supporting secular trends and eventually planning to topple the Islamic system. The continuing press crackdown by hardliners within the judiciary -- more than 40 publications have been closed and dozens of liberal journalists and activists jailed -- is seen as an effort to stop the trend.

The reformists, who have been elected by the people to positions of executive and legislative power, plan to amend some of the basic laws of the country during Khatami's second four- year term.

Khatami has stressed that the will of the people is not just a formality but must be both legalized and institutionalized. This means that a revision regarding the reform course and the credibility of the administration appears necessary.

But many observers predict that this approach, which is in line with the reformists' demands, is equivalent to a Mission Impossible.