Hawks step up attack on Khatami

By Kesava Menon

MANAMA (BAHRAIN), SEPT. 23. There are eight months to go before the next Presidential election in Iran but the conservative opponents of Mr. Mohammad Khatami are stepping up their efforts to try and deny him a second term.

Until now, the conservatives had only criticised the Iranian President in an elliptical fashion - castigating his Ministers, supporters and advisors - but they now seem set to attack Mr. Khatami more directly. So far, the conservatives have appeared to be out of sync with the public mood and it is not certain that they will be able to turn public opinion completely around before the Presidential poll.

To be sure, the conservatives are playing the game almost entirely on their own terms in respect of the media campaign. With just one liberal newspaper left to provide a measure of neutral reporting, the conservative dominated print and electronic media have a near monopoly on the distribution of news and views. They are putting their advantage to good use. A prime example is a recent report in the hardline conservative paper Resalaat.

The report said Mr. Khatami's supporters in the town of Orumiyeh rioted and targeted shopkeepers who had not shut down their shops to attend a meeting addressed by the President. Armed with swords and chanting ``Freedom'', the rioters were said to have berated the shopkeepers for not attending the meeting. They were also said to have stolen about 15 kg of gold. There are several reasons to doubt the truth of the Resalaat report. For one, the leitmotif of Mr. Khatami's reform campaign, or the Khordad-2 movement as it is called in Iran, is restraint.

Despite grave provocations such as the closure of the pro-reform press, the arrest of leading reformers, at least two vicious physical attacks on pro-reform students groups, etc., Mr. Khatami's supporters have shown remarkable discipline in avoiding the temptation to resort to violence. Given the steady growth of public support for the pro- reform campaign, its eventual success can probably only be averted if there is intervention by the military or other security forces. The reform camp has nothing to gain and everything to lose if they provide the excuse for conservatives in the establishment to carry out a putsch.

The way the conservatives dealt with the days of rioting in the city of Khorammabad a couple of weeks ago shows the pattern of their effort to manipulate mass consciousness. Iran's biggest students' organisation, the Office to Consolidate Unity had invited two leading dissidents, Mr. Abdolkarim Souroush and Mr. Mohsen Kadivar to address a seminar.

According to independent reports, elements of the Basij vigilante group and the Revolutionary Guard who support the conservatives had beaten up the two dissidents when they arrived at Khorammabad airport and attacked the student organisers in other parts of the city. The students do appear to have retaliated since policemen were reportedly among the scores who were injured (one person was killed), but the violence had, according to all these reports, been instigated by the conservatives.

However, a conservative-dominated body, the State Inspectorate Organisation, which took upon itself the task of enquiring into the riots, found that the Deputy Interior Minister, Mr. Mostafa Tajzadeh and the local unit of the pro- reform Islamic Iran Participation Front were responsible for the violence. Both the OCU and the National Security Council, which works directly under the President, have rejected the report.

It is possible to trace the conservative gameplan from these two episodes. Reformers are not going to be allowed to propagate their viewpoint and any violence that is to be used in furtherance of these efforts will be blamed on the reformers. By the time the Presidential election comes around, the conservatives hope to build a case that the reformers in the Government and Parliament, unable to solve economic problems, are stirring social unrest.

There are reasons to doubt that this conservative campaign will work. Over the years of press censorship and suppression till Mr. Khatami's election, ordinary Iranians have built an enviable network for spreading information through the grapevine.

The effectiveness of this grapevine was proved in the Presidential election of 1997 and the Parliamentary polls earlier this year when the reform camp posted massive victories despite lacking a strong media on their side.

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Section  : International
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