Living With War And Revolution

Seven young men, all in their late teens or early 20s, slipped into a deserted dead-end street in eastern Tehran. From a neighborhood mosque, a loudspeaker rumbled with denunciations of America. While two of the youths acted as lookouts, a third placed a boxlike device at the base of a concrete wall, then rejoined his comrades. Subversives? Yes indeed, but not the kind to start an armed rebellion against the government. These, after all, were children of the Khomeini revolution, indoctrinated in the dream of conquering the world for Islam. But on this occasion they had another aim: they began to dance wildly as the pulsating rhythms of Michael Jackson's disco classic Thriller blared from the tape recorder the youth had placed beside the wall.

This scene is part of the cultural underground in Iran today. Among those who can afford them, American rock videocassettes are a big favorite. Groups of young men, many of them draft dodgers, pool their money to buy video recorders. The regime's efforts to eradicate all Western influences, and especially such evils as music, dance and free speech, have spawned a thirst for whatever the Islamic republic denounces as sinful. Example: the continuing popularity of a satirical videotaped movie called Samad Becomes the Imam, featuring a goofy, rustic character who emerges as the supreme ruler of the Islamic state.

The visible side of Iranian life today -- the hundreds of thousands who march in support of Khomeini's pledge to exact vengeance from Iraq, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia -- underscores the fact that the Islamic government still enjoys considerable support. The invisible side is more difficult to assess, but there is evidence of a growing discontent among many Iranians, particularly the educated and the well-to-do.

In the view of dissidents, all the evils for which Khomeini once criticized the Shah -- everything from brutality to official corruption -- are being committed by members of the current regime. The government continues to enjoy both popularity and legitimacy among millions of Iranians and can still command masses of young zealots who believe in Khomeini's promise to "march to Jerusalem" by way of Iraq. But the seemingly endless fighting is producing disillusionment among others. Says a factory manager whose plant is virtually closed for lack of raw materials: "A grocer down the block has lost three sons in the war. It would kill him if he had to accept the reality that they died in vain, that there is no march to Jerusalem."