Showdown in Tehran?

A huge turnout; a mood for change; expectations running high. They were the chief features of the election in Iran in February which delivered an overwhelming vote for reformist candidates. But this mood is not new. It has been clear ever since the landslide election of the reformist Mohammad Khatami to the position of president in 1997.

Since Khatami's election there has been an almighty tussle between those sections of the regime who want reform and those who do not. The conservatives are headed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He inherited the position of supreme leader of Iran after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. He controls the armed forces, the intelligence services, the judiciary and the state broadcasting services. Moreover Khamenei's allies in the clergy command many of the huge state foundations, the Bunyods, which control hundreds of companies throughout the Iranian economy. The largest Bunyod, for example, is the Bunyod Mustazafan which has a budget of over $12 billion and is headed by Mohsen Rafiqdust, Khamenei's brother in law.

Control of the Bunyods gives sections of the clergy a strong reason to block economic reforms like privatisation and to seek to limit efforts to liberalise trade and investment. Each attempt by the conservatives to neutralise the reformists intensified the mood for change. So when the popular reformist mayor of Tehran was put on trial by the conservatives in 1998, hundreds of ordinary Iranians backed him and sat glued to the televised proceedings in coffee shops across the city.

The assassination of four leading dissident intellectuals, also in 1998, caused outrage in Tehran--as did the failure to find their killers, thought to be linked to the ministry of intelligence. When students at Tehran University protested against the closure of a liberal newspaper last summer and were attacked by security forces and right wing Islamist thugs, there was a nationwide outburst of angry student demonstrations that spilled over into some working class areas. Still the conservatives tried to halt the reformist tide in the run-up to the election. They impeached ministers, jailed pro-reform clergy, closed down more newspapers, disqualified pro-reform election candidates and attacked pro-reform rallies. It all failed, and debate continues over the future of the republic, the need for democratic reform and the position of national and religious minorities.

To what extent can the reformists satisfy people's expectations? Here things are much more uncertain. The reformists are not a coherent entity. They ran under an electoral coalition of 18 different political parties, professional associations, clerical organisations, and students' and women's groups. The dominant sections of the reform coalition come from within the old regime. Khatami, for example, was a mid-ranking cleric and is a former minister of culture. He is backed by a breakaway section of the clergy, and elements within the state bureaucracy and the professions. The reformists campaigned for greater political and cultural freedom, free speech and social justice. But they wish to use democratic reform as a way to break the hold of the conservatives on the state and the economy.

The dominant elements within the coalition have an extremely familiar economic programme. They want more of the market--more dismantling of the state-controlled sectors of the economy, more privatisation and cuts in state subsidies. They also want to improve political relations with the west to attract more foreign capital, to help diversify an economy heavily dependent on its oil and gas reserves and burdened with large debt repayments.

In fact, the leading reformists want an intensification of many of the measures introduced by the former president, Rafsanjani . He brought a large number of technocrats into the civil service, and advocated the privatisation of inefficient state enterprises and the 'shock therapy' methods of the IMF and the World Bank. Rafsanjani's reforms failed, however. He is now widely discredited and only just managed to scrape into the new parliament amidst allegations of vote fixing. Other groups in the reformist coalition are less keen on the market and more associated with a strong state sector. There are also more radical groups involved, like writers' associations, women's groups and student organisations. Students in particular were furious with Khatami when he turned against their protest movement last year, as terrified by its scale as the conservatives.

Debate within the reform camp is already intense. It is likely to become more so. The leaders of the coalition have made clear they want reforms to proceed cautiously and hope they can work with the conservatives. The attempted assassination of a leading reformist shortly after the election shows this will not be easy. The president's brother, a leading figure in the new coalition, says, 'The president's efforts to open up closed ways should be done with patience, sometimes with silence.' Khatami admits the new parliament 'cannot do everything the people want'.

So the president and the new reformist parliament face not only the possibility of resistance from the old conservatives but dissatisfaction growing amongst its own supporters. There are already signs of discontent amongst workers. There were demonstrations in February against a new law that exempts small workplaces from labour laws, so giving employers more powers to sack workers and cut wages. This clash between the reformists and the conservatives, and between the reformists and the expectations of their supporters, is a recipe for an intensification of the debate taking place across Iranian society, and hopefully more protests from students and workers.