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Al-Ahram Weekly 24 - 30 June 1999 Issue No. 435 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 24 - 30 June 1999 Issue No. 435
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Interview Travel Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters The 'spies' of Isfahan
By David Hirst
Friday prayers in Tehran are a central ritual of the Islamic Republic. The faithful, bussed there in their thousands, assemble to hear a sermon by one of the regime's top clerics. Often highly political rather than religious, this sets the tone of official thinking on topics of the moment.
Nowadays one thing only dominates the politics of Iran, and that is the endemic, unresolved power struggle between moderates and extremists, between a very popular, reformist president, Mohamed Khatami, and a deeply unpopular, arch-conservative, unelected clerical oligarchy, headed by "spiritual leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, clinging desperately to its threatened ascendancy. So when, on successive Fridays, two heavyweights of the conservative camp address themselves, at vehement length, to the recent arrest and impending trial of thirteen Iranian Jews on charges of spying for Israel, it is a clear signal that they intend to exploit it as a new, and highly charged, weapon in the power struggle.
The Friday before last Ayatollah Mohamed Yazdi, the chief of the Judiciary, told worshippers that "the world" should pay him heed as the "highest justice official in Iran".
President Mohamed Khatami during an unprecdented meeting with Pope John III in March. The meeting confirmed Khatami's desire to break his country's isolation (photo AP)
The thirteen accused, he said, would be "tried under Islamic law for treason, and they could be sentenced to death not just once but many times." Denouncing US and Israeli "interference", he asked, "Of what human rights do they talk? Must we violate the rights of sixty million Iranians for the sake of Zionism? Their dissatisfaction with us, their anxiety, is proof of our wisdom."
Last Friday it was the turn of Ayatollah Ali Jannati, the éminence grise of the Ansar-e-Hizbullah street vigilantes, who said that the thirteen were not being charged because of their religion, but because they had been "transmitting information to Israel via Turkey". They should be hanged, Jannati added.
The accused come from the southern towns of Shiraz and Isfahan, where substantial numbers of Iran's estimated 27,000 Jews live. They were arrested in March. Nothing official was said about it. But, according to one report, the whole affair grew out of an alcohol-related offence. Iran's religious minorities are permitted to make alcoholic beverages for their own use, but are forbidden to sell them to the Muslim majority.
Whatever the origins of the case, the extreme improbability of the espionage charge has led many Iranians to conclude that, for the regime's hard-liners, the case has come as just another opportunity in their relentless "war of attrition" against Khatami and the reformist camp. From his Paris exile, former President Abolhasan Bani-Sadr called it "a manoeuvre by those close to Ayatollah Khamenei". "They think", he said, "that they can paralyse the opposing [Khatami] faction, who, if they protest, can be denounced as pro-Israeli or pro-American." They also hope to "increase the country's isolation and the climate of violence, so as to prevent any normalisation with Western countries."
Western diplomats in Tehran agree that the purpose is to weaken Khatami. It is certainly consistent with the whole pattern of the conservatives' behaviour since -- to their immense consternation -- Khatami trounced their own candidate, parliamentary speaker Ayatollah Nateq Nouri, in the presidential elections two years ago. Making up for their lack of popular support through their continued control of key institutions, they have been doing all they can to thwart Khatami's liberal-minded ambition to construct an "Islamic civil society" at home, and engage in a "dialogue of religions and civilisations" abroad. They know that the more Khatami gets his way, the more his success will threaten the very foundation of the Khomeinist "divine-political" system, which grants them, the clergy, supreme temporal as well as spiritual power.
It is the first time since the revolution of 1979 that the authorities have unmasked such a high-profile "Zionist plot". But now that they have, it can be seen as an episode which, being so rich in demagogic potential, was just waiting to happen. For the conservatives' exploitation of such highly emotive, or symbolic, issues is remorseless; so is their quest for new issues to exploit. These often derive their potency from what is deemed to be Islamically "sacred", or -- which is pretty much the same thing for them -- inherent in the "legacy" of Khomeini. The most celebrated instance of such an issue was Khomeini's own Fatwa calling for the execution of the British novelist Salman Rushdie. New or rediscovered controversies can be fundamental in nature, like the argument over whether to restore relations with the American "Great Satan", or trivial, like the current furore over changing the name of a street, called Khaled Islambouli Street after the assassin of President Sadat, in the interests of improving relations with Egypt.
In their newspapers, the conservatives make no secret about the underlying political advantages that such a cause célèbre could furnish them. Thus Jumhur Islami, which is close to "spiritual leader" Khamenei, wrote last week that "Washington's obdurate attitude in connection with these spies shows that the US is still the enemy number one of the Iranian people. This should be an eloquent lesson for all those in Iran who advocate a normalisation of relations with the US administration."
Khatami, of course, is chief among those. There is confusion and embarrassment in his camp, which, unlike the conservatives, has said almost nothing about the case -- though a spokesman of the Foreign Ministry, generally a stronghold of moderation, felt moved to complain of the US and Israel's "ill-informed and irresponsible comments". Khatami has done no more than hint at his exasperation: clearly, he still doesn't feel strong enough for that open showdown with his adversaries that many of his supporters would welcome. "Some people," he confined himself to saying, "will use almost any method to ruin the plans of the government"; and some "create conflicts to attain their objectives and deprive the people of their constitutional right to a free system."
This is a clear reference to the coming, and crucial, phase in the Iranian power struggle, next year's parliamentary elections, the sixth since the revolution. If these are free and fair, the conservatives will lose as decisively as they did in presidential and municipal elections, and thereby forfeit their majority control of the legislature. That dire prospect greatly alarms them, and accounts for what the moderates see as their growing desperation and unscrupulousness.
"Observers", reported the well-informed pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat from Tehran last week, "expect the death sentence to be handed down, but it is not sure whether it will be carried out."
All the signs are that, with the chief justice himself so publicly condemning the accused before the trial even takes place, their fate will be determined less by their guilt or innocence than by the lengths to which a ruling clique of unelected, obscurantist clerics are ready to go in their campaign to keep down Khatami and the overwhelming, democratically proven, popular will which he embodies.
