Iran's New Revolutionary

By Scott Macleod and Azadeh Moaveni/Tehran

President Mohammed Khatami strides across the Mehrabad Airport tarmac to the salute of soldiers in ceremonial sashes. Mullahs in dark robes, bearded aides in suits with tieless shirts and militiamen carrying Kalashnikovs trail him up to Iran's equivalent of Air Force One--an old American-made Boeing 707 from before the Islamic Revolution. In minutes he is roaring off to a speech--it is an anniversary in the Iran-Iraq war--near the Iraqi border. There is no mistaking Khatami when he slips back from the front of the plane, wandering down through a cabin decorated in late-1970s style. In contrast to his entourage's rough-edged, revolutionary look, his clerical attire is soft and cheerful: a pear-colored robe, a chocolate tunic, sporty tan calf loafers. He flashes the smile that has given hope to Iranians depressed by two decades of official somberness. As he makes his way, greeting officials, bodyguards and Iranian journalists, he spots the two Americans on board. "Where are you from?" he asks, opening his arms. Could the President answer some questions? He laughs. "Inshallah [God willing]." The phrase could be construed as an Islamic brush-off: right now, at least, the President is talking to almost no one in the press. These days the President of Iran is moving very carefully.

It's a good day for Khatami. When he lands in Khorramshahr and heads to a local mosque to speak, the crowds are spread in front of him like a giant Persian carpet: turbans, signs, balloons. He speaks to thousands, delivering the scrupulously worded message of moderate change that has made him a hero to many--and a terrifying figure to the hard-liners who have dominated Iran's politics since the death of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989. Khatami's struggle to reform Iran is proving a dangerous task. One of the President's closest friends is recovering from a gunshot wound to the head, nearly assassinated by hard-liners. Dozens of other supporters are in jail or heading there. Iran's hard-liners have sent a chilling message that they won't go without a fight.Through all this, Khatami has been conspicuously quiet, hoping his absence of comment would be seen as thundering determination. His supporters approvingly call it "Khatami's silence."

Yet the silence risks spreading disillusionment. Khatami's impatient, enraptured young supporters greet him with chants of "Kha-ta-mi! Kha-ta-mi! Doostet darim [We love you]!" This is a nation desperate for change, starving for leadership. And Khatami's difficult task is to rework Iran's system from within. It's an excruciatingly difficult way to be a reformer, fighting battles by not fighting battles. The pressures are exacting a toll. Chest pains sent him to the hospital recently. He winds down each night by scratching out a few pages of his memoir--in ink--at home. Khatami is a former Culture Minister and a onetime head of the national library. He is not a born politician. His colleagues speak of his "delicate sensibilities." They fear he might resign or refuse to run for a second four-year term next year.

For now, he fights on--carefully. He was, for instance, willing to give TIME access to his office and his schedule--something that would have been unheard of a year ago in Iran. But he would not offer an interview--something that remains too politically sensitive.

Two weeks ago, the most freely elected parliament in Iranian history took up its duties in a marble-sided edifice in downtown Tehran. In the biggest boost for reform since Khatami's victory in 1997, Iranians in February ousted conservatives and handed Khatami control of the 290-seat Majlis-e Shura. The mullah count in this new, moderate parliament is down from 53 to 33. And among the deputies taking their seats were an actor-politician in Western blue jeans and women M.P.s, daringly dressed in head scarves rather than chadors.

Few personify the possibilities--and dangers--of this new Iranian revolution better than Khatami, 57. The 5-ft. 10-in. President grew up in a tolerant home in Yazd province, which prides itself on its diversity. He trained as a cleric in Qum, one of the holiest of Iranian cities, but also studied Western philosophy. He played no big role in Khomeini's revolution, yet nonetheless rose to become a leading religious intellectual, prized for both his candor and his mind. But he was never a man who lusted for power. Friends recall his fury when a group of liberal clerics suggested he run for President. But when moderates convinced him that his credibility with hard-liners meant he was the only man who could change Iran, he plunged into the 1997 campaign.

As a mullah, Khatami hardly rejects the notion of an Islamic republic. His most cherished aim is to serve the Islamic government by giving people the right to choose it--a concept that is dangerously revolutionary to hard-liners who believe in imposing it by diktat. Outside Iran, especially in Washington, diplomats speculate that Khatami may be unable to convince the hard-liners that reform is really necessary, and American officials grimly point to Khatami's meetings with supporters of terrorism as a sign that he may not be as moderate as some hope.

Khatami has plenty of enemies--but also a vibrant, courageous collection of allies. Mohsen Mirdamadi, 44, an M.P. who arrived at the new parliament dressed nattily in a tweed jacket and horn-rimmed glasses, is typical of the breed of intellectuals who share Khatami's vision. In 1979 Mirdamadi was among a handful of students who organized the seizure of the U.S. embassy. But his politics moderated after he spent several years learning the ropes of Western democracy while earning a doctorate at Cambridge University. He is now a top strategist for the Participation Front, the moderate party led by, among others, the President's brother Reza. The name of the party is deliberate: what Iran's new revolutionaries want to bring to their country is legitimate--and open--democracy. "The people have very high expectations," says Mirdamadi. "They expect serious changes."

Over tea at the horseshoe-shaped table in the party's conference room, Mirdamadi sketches out the reform dream for Iran. One of the first goals, he explains, will be to loosen press restrictions, thus enabling the reform newspapers and magazines that were first muzzled in April to begin publishing again. This is more than just a battle for civil rights: reopening the dissident press will help keep the reform movement--and its leaders--alive. The Participation Front is also hoping to open Iran's opaque judicial system with a bill that will give conservative judges less leeway to lock up reformers on grounds that their democratic ideas contravene Islamic teachings.

The problem is that these days, at least, the conservatives still have their fingers glued firmly to the levers of power in Iran, including the 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guards. One Iranian political scientist has engaged in the morbid task of trying to calculate the odds that Khatami will remain in office. His verdict: a 70% chance that radicals will try to overthrow Khatami. He's giving 5-1 odds against the possibility that Khatami will still be around in a year's time. Some in Iran argue that conservatives have already staged a "silent" coup, by intimidating the media and attacking Khatami's key aides. The arm of the hard-liners has stopped short only of Khatami himself. Last year they put presidential confidant Abdollah Nouri on trial for publishing anti-Islamic articles. Though the transcript of his pro-democracy court testimony became a best-selling book, Nouri got a five-year jail sentence.

He was lucky. Earlier this spring, as conservatives jockeyed to have their electoral showing nullified, extremists tried to assassinate Saeed Hajjarian, the strategist who helped push Khatami's supporters to victory. Khatami got news of the shooting as he was speaking in southern Iran. He dropped his prepared text, angrily denounced political violence and went to the bedside of the critically wounded Hajjarian. Later, aides recalled, the President could barely speak as he choked back his tears.

It is a Sunday morning in Tehran. On the streets, traffic buzzes by. In a modern apartment fitted with medical equipment, Hajjarian lies on a cot wearing only green pajama bottoms as a physical therapist works the flabby muscles of his left arm. Hajjarian's left side remains paralyzed from the March shooting, but his mind is sharp, focused on Iran's turbulent transition. Slurring his speech as he summons his energy, he explains that his rendezvous with a would-be assassin was a reminder of the danger from conservatives. "They were convinced that I was against the system," he says of the five men convicted of shooting him. Iranians, he says, must understand that reform means working for the nation, not against the conservatives. "Young supporters of reform want greater speed," he explains, counseling patience. "The important thing is not the speed but the direction." Yet there is a whole generation of clerics, businesspeople and politicians who are eager to enact reform--now. "Khatami," says Ghaffar Azizi, a city councilman from Kurdistan, "is making democracy a habit for Iranians."

Hasan Yusefi-Eshkevari, for instance, is a mullah who has fallen for that habit. He is a radical of sorts, calling for an end to authoritarian ways and arguing that democracy and Islam are not incompatible. During a recent discussion at his Tehran home, he proudly showed off his daughter's piano, a symbolic rejection of clerical injunctions against entertainment. He's paid the price for his music: reprisals began when militants tried to assault him at a speech. Then a judge summoned him for arrest after his appearance at a conference in Berlin--prompting a temporary European exile.

The nerve Eshkevari touches is velayat-e faqih, Khomeini's concept that gives the Muslim clergy, in particular its most revered scholar, absolute, God-given authority to govern Iran. Considering that legacy, political reformers avoid challenging it directly. But dissident clerics began questioning the dogma after Khomeini's death, an action that put some 500 mullahs in prison or under house arrest, including the most senior critic, Ayatullah Hossein Ali Montazari, once Khomeini's designated successor. Conservatives are worried that democracy will disembowel velayat-e faqih--and the clerical establishment along with it. "If this debate is not resolved," warns Eshkevari, "the Islamic Republic will run into a dead end."

Iran's conservatives are starting to recognize that they need new answers to these old questions. Even old-line radicals like Mohammed Mousavi Khoeiniha, the man who green-lighted the student takeover of the U.S. embassy 21 years ago, are pushing for a new vision of Iranian democracy. During a rare interview over tea and caramels, the cleric explains that "the country must be based on a democratic foundation accepted by the people." To make that happen, Iran's conservatives are loosening up--a bit. Islamic courts are allowing limited coverage of proceedings--most notably in the trial of 13 Jewish Iranians accused of spying for Israel. Despite sanctioning the press crackdown, spiritual leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei--successor to Khomeini--has warned religious militants against thuggery and publicly praises Khatami--as if cautioning security forces against a coup. But Khamenei rejects any vision of freedom that threatens Islam's position in power. "As long as I live," he warned in a recent Friday sermon, "I will not allow anybody to lead the country toward secularism."

But who, then, will lead the country toward the economic and social reform it so badly needs? Crushed by inflation and 16% unemployment, Iranians are losing patience. At Tehran University two weeks ago, thousands held a pro-democracy demonstration, chanting angry slogans against hard-line mullahs while holding pictures of jailed Iranian journalists. If anything, the convening of a reform parliament puts more pressure on Khatami to satisfy the yearning for change. "We understand he is trying to fill a huge pool with an eyedropper," says Tehran secretary Rezvan Nayeri, 34. "But there is no more room for excuses." Some students are frustrated too that the reform movement remains an insider's game, still intolerant of secularists, socialists or anyone ambivalent about the Islamic Revolution. Says Ibrahim Yazdi, head of the Iran Freedom Movement: "If we can create a democracy that is Iranianized and Islamicized, then this historical experiment can be a model for other countries."

If you had tried to guess which one of the Khatami brothers would have grown up to be President, you most likely would have chosen the President's younger brother Reza. With his film-star looks, he seems the picture of a politico (though his British education as a nephrologist is perhaps an unlikely pedigree). But Reza sees something in his brother that other Iranians seem to spot as well--an ability to telegraph hope without igniting fear. If left to his own devices, Reza speculates, his brother would return to the books of the national library and quiet afternoons of philosophical discussion. Mrs. Khatami, Reza adds, "on the whole is not very pleased" with her husband's new career.

But what seems to drive the President--to keep him in office even as friends suffer for his reforms--is an idealistic sense of duty to the nation and a deep belief that the Iranian people must be given the power to choose. "Khatami never expected and does not expect now to be able to carry out all of his plans," Reza explains. "But he believed that he could take one step forward." Reza pauses in reflection. "In my opinion," he adds, "he has had one goal. And that was to keep hope alive in people's hearts." It remains to be seen if Khatami will be the Mikhail Gorbachev of Iran. But he has already begun to lead the nation down a path that seems inevitable. His occasional silence in the face of monstrous challenges isn't the quiet of a man who has no passion or no ideas. Instead, it's the quiet determination of a man who will not give up.

--With reporting by Massimo Calabresi/Washington

With reporting by Massimo Calabresi/Washington