Iran Moderates Turning Into Hardliners

by Ramin Mostaqim

Since then, his views have radically changed. "I wish I had never thought of war like that," he says. "It is so tragic, just think of the casualties."

Boroumandi owns a set of printing presses. His friends include leading writers and intellectuals in Teheran. Today he and many like him are taking the same position on war as the hard-line Islamists. Everyone talks with sympathy of the "oppressed people of Iraq."

Pro-reform newspapers such as the Yas-e-Nou and Hambastqi had begun to talk early of a post-Saddam regime and champion Dr. Ahmed Chalabi, the U.S.-based leader of the Iraqi National Congress. Now they do not want to bet on the future of the likes of Chalabi.

A change is creeping into the urban middle classes in cities like Teheran, Esfehan and the historic southern city Shiraz. The rich in these cities have traditionally been apolitical. But as the war claims more casualties, and turns uglier than anyone could have imagined two weeks ago, people dining out in the most elegant restaurants complain now of the export of American democracy.

If the U.S. had a following in these classes over the years, it has lost much of it in the last two weeks.

The government has been active in encouraging demonstrations against the war. Many thousands have joined protests in which men are separated from women.

But opposition to President George W. Bush does not always mean the same thing as support for Saddam Hussein. A leader announced at one demonstration that people must express solidarity with the "oppressed people of Basra, and curse Bush, Saddam and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon."

The attendance at these demonstrations is telling. The demonstrators have included well-connected civil servants, soldiers in uniform and women dressed in black.

But not everyone hates the Great Satan, as Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, described the U.S. Ahmed Akbari, playing with his ten-year-old son in Laleh Park by the Contemporary Museum of Art has not joined any anti-war rally, and he does not intend to.

"We Iranians have had enough politics," he says. "No more." Akbari was laid off from his job in a recycling company, and he now plies a taxi through the traffic jams of Teheran. To Akbari, managing like many others on only a small income, money and opportunities sound better than talk against the Great Satan.

Some political leaders are talking now of Iran's "active neutrality" in the Iraq war. That means in effect taking a strong line against the U.S. without getting involved. Dissident leader Ayatollah Montazeri who was released from house arrest two months ago has asked people to remain impartial in a war "between two equal evils."

Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi has said Iran will only recognize a democratically elected government in Iraq, not one imposed by the U.S. Mohsen Rezai, key member of the Expediency Council, an influential body within the government, has asked for "further active diplomacy to resist the hegemony seeking of the U.S. administration in the region."

Iran is seeing unexpected contradictions. Traditional Muslims have distanced themselves from the strict official interpretation of Shia Islam for some time now. But moderate and reform-minded people are shifting to the side of the hardliners.