Crippled Men, Funerals Reflect Toll : Behind the Festive Neon, War Erodes Life in Iran

At first glance, Tehran hardly looks like the capital of a nation at war. Festive neon lights brighten the soft spring evenings, consumer goods are plentiful and military traffic is sparse.

But a closer look reveals the reality: The 6 1/2-year-old war between Iran and Iraq has eaten deeply into the life of Tehran and into the life of Iran, a proud nation whose radical ideology has isolated it from much of the world.

The unusual number of crippled young men, many hobbling on crutches, is not immediately evident in this sprawling city of more than 6 million people. Nor is the toll of Iranian dead, which officials here claim has risen to a third of a million, although countless youthful faces appear on posters around the city, each representing one of the fallen.

In the southern city of Ahvaz, the likenesses of hundreds of the city’s war victims can be seen along the divider strip of the main thoroughfare and on the outer walls of a large mosque.

Those who die in the war are known collectively as “martyrs,” a word encouraged by Iran’s leadership in order to emphasize that the struggle against Iraq is as much a religious crusade as a war.

Nightly, in the warren of Tehran’s back streets, martyrs’ funerals join in the rhythm of life. The bright lights, music and crowds of loved ones reflect more a celebration than a sadness.

Indeed, many in Iran say it would be a cruel insult to offer condolences to the family of a war victim. Instead, the survivors are to be congratulated for the honor of their sacrifice.

“If a mullah (a holy man) tells a family they’ll probably lose a son at the front, there’s a sense that they should feel blessed,” a Western resident of Tehran said the other day.

It is outside Tehran, at a cemetery called Behesht Zahra, where Iran buries its lost sons. People who have seen the place say it is huge and that it continues to grow with new coffins arriving daily, usually accompanied by loved ones clutching photos of the dead son or brother.

Disabled war veterans are treated with deference and respect. On a crowded Iran Air flight from Frankfurt, Germany, to Tehran, a foreigner’s seatmate proudly pointed out a nearby youth with two artificial arms being fed by a companion.

Later, at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport, the youth and his companion were given precedence by the lone customs official, who carefully inspected about 20 boxes of goods that the pair had brought back from their brief stay abroad, while others waited patiently.

“The soldiers go for treatment in Germany, but the trouble is, they come back as merchants,” a waiting Iranian remarked.

Many Tehran residents have taped large X’s on residential and office windows to cut down on flying glass from occasional Iraqi bombing raids, but the war here is principally a television affair.

Viewers are bombarded daily with prolonged, often repetitive footage of action at the front. Battle scenes are also transmitted during midday and evening prayers, underscoring the religious nature of the struggle.

Prayer Meeting

At the main Friday prayers on the grounds of Tehran University, a large crowd dominated by uniformed servicemen chants, “Karbala, Karbala, we are coming!” Karbala, a city holy to Shia Muslims, who predominate here, is in central Iraq.

A special section is roped off and empty, reserved for Iraqi prisoners who straggle in to take part in the service.

People who are unable to make their way into the giant tent where the prayer meeting is held stand on the road outside. Lines painted on the road, which Westerners are likely to take for parking guides, are there to enable worshipers to face Mecca.

Less than a mile away is the old U.S. Embassy building, now a school for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards. The outer walls are still daubed with anti-American slogans.

Compensating With Courage

The near-total commitment of national resources to the war has brought investment in the city to a virtual standstill. Construction projects are abandoned, many of them untouched since the war began.

“There’s been no major investment since 1979,” a diplomat here said. “The country has done well on what existed before, but there’s a feeling that it’s now time to do more.”

Occasionally, busloads of military volunteers, called baseej, move noisily through the city on their way to the front. They wave flags, sing, chant and sound their horns, like high school students headed for a basketball game.

The baseej are the casual labor of the Iran-Iraq War, compensating with courage and religious fervor for what they lack in military training. Ranging in age from early teens to late middle age, these idealistic citizen-soldiers sometimes sign on for periods as short as 45 days, but often return for six or seven tours of duty.

Staggering Casualty Rates

Among one such group leaving Tehran for the war last week were a 56-year-old roughneck from the oil fields, on his fourth trip to the front, a 35-year-old geologist and a 17-year-old named Najid Dashbanzadeh, who said he had first gone to the front at age 13 and had just signed on for his seventh tour.

At the front, the baseej serve in Revolutionary Guard units, which are committed to attack in large numbers to overwhelm the enemy after better-trained veteran units have penetrated the Iraqi defenses. Their casualty rates are said to be staggering.

Resident diplomats say the casualties and the inability to deliver on repeated promises of imminent final victory have stirred some public disquiet in Tehran, but they say it is far short of open opposition.

“Enthusiasm is still very high, but I believe it’s peaked,” a Western resident said.

Weary of War

A diplomat said, “People are beginning to tire of the revolution and the war, but if the imam (the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader) says continue, they will.”

Westerners here believe that the disclosure of secret U.S. arms shipments to Iran has had a small but important dampening effect on popular enthusiasm for the war. This effect has been emphasized, they say, by the disclosure that the Iranian government dealt not only with the “Great Satan,” as the United States is still officially labeled, but also with Israel, the ultimate enemy of fundamentalist Shia Islam.

These people sense a growing feeling that the war, at first a powerful national unifying force that helped consolidate the 1979 revolution against the Shah of Iran, may gradually become a liability to the government.

“To sustain a war a long time erodes confidence,” one diplomat said. “If you keep saying this year the war will end, then next year, and you can’t deliver, then there’s a reluctance to go and fight.”

Religious Obligation to Fight

Some believe that the government, for the first time, may be having trouble recruiting volunteers for a new baseej corps of 100,000 men. A Western diplomat described as “highly unusual” a recent public reminder that volunteering to fight is a religious obligation.

There is no conscription in Iran. Social pressure to join the crusade has made it unnecessary.

And so far, opposition to Iran’s radical government or the war it pursues has had little if any impact.

A diplomat noted that a recent doubling of the price of gasoline, to just over $4 a gallon, brought hardly a murmur of protest.

Before the revolution, a resident recalled, when the shah proposed an increase from about 28 cents to 45 cents a gallon, “he had to withdraw it to avoid a revolt.”

Reports, mostly unsubstantiated, float through the diplomatic community that some elements of the religious hierarchy have advocated changes in military tactics in order to reduce casualties, or have suggested a compromise peace formula with Iraq.

Compromise Ruled Out

Speculation heightened not long ago with a front-page report in the Times of London that Saudi Arabia was actively mediating a truce and that during King Fahd’s recent visit to London, his foreign minister, Prince Saud al Faisal, met secretly with a prominent member of Iran’s Supreme Defense Council to discuss the matter.

But a few days later a tough speech by Khomeini ruled out any compromise. He also brushed aside talk of a temporary cease-fire during the coming Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“Ramadan is a month of war,” the ayatollah said. “Death to all tyrants of the world!”

People labeled tyrants by the government enjoy a special notoriety in the sometimes-bizarre graffiti seen in Tehran.

A long wall near the Swedish Embassy displays what amounts to a rogues’ gallery of political villains, including President Reagan, in Uncle Sam costume, and President Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Both are shown pointing guns at an unarmed Iranian.

Hatred of U.S. Remains

Also pictured there is a worried Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain, bearing the flag of Israel and being chased over a map of Northern Ireland under a hail of eggs and tomatoes.

Iran’s dislike of the two superpowers is probably best illustrated at the old Royal Astoria Hotel in Ahvaz, now called the Grand Fajr. U.S., Soviet and Israeli flags are painted across the hotel’s stone entrance, making it impossible to enter or leave the building without walking over one of them.

The government is still distributing copies of documents taken from the U.S. Embassy after it was overwhelmed by a mob in November, 1979. About the last thing anyone leaving the country can buy is at a desk near the airport departure lounge, identified by a sign that calls it “The Center for the Publication of the USA Espionage Den’s Documents.”