A Nation Still in Torment

IRAN A Nation Still in Torment More executions as the conflict between left and right widens

Revolutionary Iran continued to be racked by vengeance and division last week. The wave of summary trials and executions spread to include two businessmen who had held no official positions in the Shah's regime. At the same time, the conflict between the ruling Islamic conservatives and the angry left grew wider, as government and religious leaders blamed the Communists for the assassination on May 1 of Morteza Motahari, a prominent Ayatullah and a member of the Revolutionary Council.

Last week's execution of 38 men brought to 204 the number of those condemned to death before firing squads. Among the latest victims were two former Ministers of Information, the last speaker of the lower house of parliament under the Shah, and a number of members of the notorious antiterrorist committee of SAVAK, the disbanded secret police, including a physician charged with specializing in torture techniques.

The two businessmen, both multimillionaires, were Habib Elghanian, a plastics manufacturer and the first Jew to be condemned, and Rahim Ali Khorram, a Muslim who owned a string of gambling casinos and bordellos. Elghanian,who was convicted of spying for Israel, was said to have made huge investments in Israel and to have solicited funds for the Israeli army, which the prosecution claimed made him an accomplice "in murderous air raids against innocent Palestinians." Witnesses against Khorram charged that he supplied prostitutes for the Shah's officials, once fed a man to a lion in his amusement park, and kept a secret morgue for the bodies of his enemies.

The conviction of Elghanian caused concern among some Jewish businessmen in Iran, who feared that they too could be charged with contributing money to Israel. But most Jews did not believe that their community, which now numbers about 65,000, was being targeted for abuse. Muslim leaders, including Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, have repeatedly stressed that the rights of religious minorities would be protected. "We are uneasy," conceded a Jewish intellectual in Tehran, "but there is no room for panic." And a Jewish university student noted that former Premier Amir Abbas Hoveida, who was executed last month, was also accused of espionage for Israel--"and he was not a Jew."

In the aftermath of the terrorist assassinations by a group calling itself Forghan, few moderates were willing to speak out, for fear of being accused of aiding counterrevolutionaries. Premier Mehdi Bazargan cautioned against becoming "tyrants ourselves," but the public generally was still overwhelmingly in favor of the trials. "Let the Western press and the so-called human rights organizations howl on," voiced Radio Iran. "Their double standards fool nobody. The revolutionary tribunals have a bereaved nation to account to. They may not desecrate the sacred memory of tens of thousands of our martyrs by being lenient to these criminals."

Although twelve reputed members of Forghan are reported to have been arrested for the murders of Motahari and Major General Mohammed Vali Gharani, former army Chief of Staff, the government was releasing little information on the case. Leaflets left by the group tried to portray its members as devoted to "Islam without the clergy." But many observers, in fact, believe that the professionally carried-out assassinations were the work of former SAVAK agents bent on creating anarchy or of vengeance squads associated with former top officials who have been executed.

In any case, the regime was taking no chances. Khomeini announced that the revolutionary militias, known as the Guardians, would henceforth constitute a special armed force responsible only to the Revolutionary Council. The militias are expected to be a deterrent against further attempts on the leadership of the revolution--either from the left or from remnants of SAVAK.

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