Iran: Tales of Gloom

Inside a beset regime

Mostafa Hakimian is the pseudonym of an Iranian diplomat who held several senior positions in Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's Islamic government until he was ousted last year. Since then, Hakimian has traveled to Iran secretly half a dozen times. Last week, after his latest visit there, he shared his impressions with TIME.

When I went to Iran three months ago, I thought the situation could not get any worse. I was wrong. The ruling clergy have turned Iran into one huge funeral parlor. Death and the related ceremonies are the only diversions available. A thick miasma of repression and gloom has settled on the land.

In Urumieh, located in northwest Iran, all one sees are soldiers, Islamic Guards, veiled women and sallow-faced, apprehensive men and children. The city, once among the cleanest and most picturesque in Iran, is now an eyesore: a panorama of uncollected garbage, decaying public works, empty shops and people in tattered clothes.

In several other cities, I saw enough to conclude that the Khomeini regime is under siege. Anyone anywhere in Tehran is liable to a body search. The most terrifying aspect of the checks is the jittery, trigger-happy condition of the militiamen. They know there is a good chance they will die if they stop an urban guerrilla. When I was stopped one day, I deliberately feigned shock and fear, sitting down and asking for a glass of water. At the first sign of my weakness, their faces lighted up. The leader of the search party told me: "You must understand our problem. Many of our brothers have asked a suspicious character to stop and found themselves blown to pieces right away."

Despite the repression, the people are fighting back. A police captain told me that every single day the Tehran police find one or two bodies of government officials or Islamic Guards, blindfolded, manacled and shot in the head by urban guerrillas. All such bodies have a slip of paper attached, declaring that the victim has been found guilty of treason and sentenced to death by the "People's Court."

Nobody believes the present system will last, not even senior government officials and the regime's own political police. This mentality causes officials, from the senior clergy down to the Islamic militiamen, to be corrupt. Everyone is trying to make as much as possible within the shortest time in order to escape before the day of reckoning. Everything is for sale. Any arrest, court order or verdict is negotiable. When rich people—that is, what's left of them—are arrested for whatever reason, a multiplicity of "family friends" turn up, offering to arrange for their release.