Better Luck This Time

• Share

Iran's president mohammed khatami radiated smiles last week as he left a Tehran polling station and waded into an ecstatic crowd of young voters all chanting "We love you!" The President waved at supporters, but his good cheer belies the tough road that lies ahead. "I'm not sure what's going to happen, but we're probably not going to feel relief," he told Time. The President easily won a second term, trouncing nine challengers, but as the post-election euphoria wears off most Iranians are coming to realize that the fate of reform lies in the hands of another cleric whose name was not even on the ballot: Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. "Without him on board, reform is still possible," says a Khatami adviser, "but at a snail's pace."

Khamenei, 62, has been Iran's Supreme Leader since Ayatullah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, died in 1989. As Khatami has made international headlines for trying to introduce democratic reform to Iran, Khamenei has blocked nearly every step toward more press and political freedom. The two clerics may disagree on the extent of reform, but they do share one priority — the preservation of the Islamic system.

Khamenei's hard-line conservative allies, operating with his approval if not instructions, shut dozens of pro-Khatami reform newspapers and jailed leading journalists, publishers, clerics and political activists. After Khatami's supporters captured parliament in elections last year, Khamenei restrained the new body by ordering it to drop legislation lifting press restrictions, the top item on its agenda.

As the campaign wrapped up, Khamenei maintained a posture of regal detachment, giving sermons, meeting student groups and receiving Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Yet as Supreme Leader, he holds the real power in Iran. He commands the armed forces and appoints officials to important state bodies, including the judiciary, state television and the Council of Guardians, the body of clerics that approves legislation as well as the outcomes of elections. The President is responsible for upholding the constitution, but Khomeini's doctrine of velayat-e faqih, or religious governance, gives Khamenei a divine right to rule.

Khamenei often thwarts reform directly by open decree, while at other times his pronouncements are used as a pretext for a crackdown by his political allies, who include a network of ruthless and corrupt clerics determined to retain their influence. Iranians suspect that Khamenei is forced to tolerate them to protect both his own position and the Islamic system of government he heads. Khamenei is less threatened by these clerics than by the reformists, some of whom believe his authority should be revoked.

Many reformists believe that Khamenei forged this unholy alliance to offset the insecurity he feels because he lacks his predecessor's personal charisma. His Islamic credentials have been challenged even by colleagues, who point out that he became an ayatullah — a top rank in the Shi'ite clergy — only after he was chosen as Khomeini's successor.

But Khamenei has a gentler side, too. He plays the tar, a traditional stringed instrument, is an expert on the Persian poet Hafez and prays in the mountains clad in blue jeans. These sensibilities help Khamenei relate to ordinary Iranians and to Khatami, who was Culture Minister and a philosopher before he became President. Some Iranians hope this awareness will encourage Khamenei to eventually permit some reforms to proceed, if only to restore the credibility of the Islamic system in the eyes of the country's disillusioned youth.

One encouraging sign is that Khamenei's advisers are eager to cast him not as a reform spoiler but as the indispensable arbiter between those who resist change and those who promote it. "He's a paternal figure," says Taha Hashemi, editor of the conservative newspaper Entekhab. "He can't show favoritism between two sons." While Khatami's weekly meetings with Khamenei have done little to aid reform, insiders say their long-standing relationship may have protected Khatami and his allies in times of need. When the hard-line Guardian Council moved to annul the reformist victory in Tehran during last year's parliamentary elections, for example, it was Khamenei who brokered a settlement and rescued the vote for change.

That may seem little solace for Khatami as he begins his second term. Not long after the President's stunning upset victory over a high-ranking conservative in 1997, an old friend of Khamenei's in the clergy wrote the Supreme Leader urging him to embrace reform. "History will remember you unkindly unless you succeed in uniting the conservatives with Khatami," the friend warned. The clergyman showed a copy of the letter to Khatami, who commented, "It won't do any good." So far it hasn't, but after a second reformist victory things may change.