Enemy of The State?

By Scott Macleod/Tehran

Abdollah Nouri does not look like a dangerous counterrevolutionary. In a nation run by clerics, he ranks among the most senior, not quite an ayatullah but a hojatolislam, or "proof of Islam." Over dates and tea in his office, the diminutive religious scholar turned newspaper publisher spoke with tones of bureaucractic conformity. But his words were far from blather. "Transferring power to the people was an objective of our revolution 20 years ago," he told TIME in a rare interview. But, he added candidly, "power has a tendency to create authoritarianism."

And that kind of outspokenness is one reason the powers that be in Iran wish to destroy him.

This week Nouri will be called before a court to answer a 44-page indictment. He stands accused of dishonoring the Ayatullah Khomeini, undermining the authority of Iran's ruling clergy and promoting relations with the U.S. If he is convicted, he faces a hefty fine, lashes of the whip or a dozen years in prison. Much more critically, Nouri will then be disqualified from heading the reform ticket in next February's elections, thus ending any chance of his becoming the powerful speaker of Iran's 270-seat parliament, the Majlis-e-Shura. A victory by Nouri is crucial to his chief ally, the embattled reformist President of Iran, Mohammed Khatami, and his efforts to promote moderation, expand freedom and normalize Iran's relations with the outside world. "The court is trying to get rid of me," Nouri told TIME last week. "But the trial is really a trial of the reform movement."

This is not Nouri's first scuffle with hard-liners: in an impeachment trial last year, parliament ousted him as Minister of the Interior for permitting student demonstrations. Since then, his main vehicle of dissent has been the national daily Khordad. The newspaper has published defiant antiregime opinions by prominent clerics, notably Grand Ayatullah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who has been under house arrest since 1997 for questioning velayat-e-faqih, the absolute authority of the clergy. In an explosive article, a young cleric, Mohsen Kadivar, even criticized the royalist tendencies of the clerics and their treatment of Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei as a shah. Hard-liners feel particularly threatened, explains newspaper commentator Akbar Gangi, because the reformers have impeccable revolutionary credentials too and thus cannot be lightly dismissed or called traitors. Says Gangi: "We have a saying in Persian, 'Only stone can break stone.'"

Being the patron and publisher of such notions has made Nouri one of the most popular politicians in Iran--and has led to expectations that the reformists may wrest control of the Majlis from hard-line conservatives allied with Ayatullah Khamenei. The prospect of getting shut out of power, maybe for good, frightens the conservatives. Lawmakers have ignored Khatami's proposals to make elections fairer by eliminating a candidate-screening procedure, and are pushing to tighten press restrictions. Besides shutting down newspapers and jailing editors, the courts have imprisoned Khatami supporters on corruption charges.

Some Khatami supporters fear that bullying tactics will deal a fatal blow to the President's reforms and perhaps trigger a repeat of last summer's student riots, which in turn could prompt a military crackdown. However, Khatami may still be able to pull off a victory. His strategy is to send a flood of loyalist candidates to the election board, so that even if political stars like Nouri are barred, a solid number will survive the vetting process and get elected. Some analysts are predicting that the regime's heavy-handed tactics could wind up mobilizing the sort of strong voter turnout that propelled Khatami to his unexpected victory in 1997. "There could be a backlash," says Tehran University professor Nasser Hadian. "The conservatives are making Khatami and his supporters look like underdogs."

Nouri praises Khatami for making government more accountable but warns that the President's program will face "serious problems" if reform forces are unfairly excluded from the next parliament. "If the rules of the game are observed," says Nouri, "Khatami will come out with flying colors." With Iran's turbulent transition, however, that remains a very big if.