Will the Real Iranian Moderates Stand Up? : Election results may give Rafsanjani his opening

Those Iranian “moderates” we heard so much about after the Reagan Administration secret arms-for-hostages deal was exposed will now have a chance to show what they can do.

Initial results from parliamentary elections indicate that a majority of the 270 seats in the Majlis will be held by supporters of President Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose interest in a more pragmatic approach to economic and political affairs has often been frustrated by anti-Western radical legislators.

Iran’s economy is struggling to recover from 13 years of lost opportunities for growth, including eight years of brutal war with Iraq, and revolutionary zeal has been waning at least since the death of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989. Rafsanjani can now claim a mandate to move ahead, a process that inevitably requires better relations with the West.

To be sure, the election, while it offered more real choice than any ever allowed in neighboring Arab states, was less than a model of unfettered democracy. A pre-election purge was effected when the Rafsanjani-dominated Council of Guardians, which passes on the suitability of office seekers, vetoed about one-third of those who signed up to run. Most of these, by no accident, were militants.

After that, though, the deck seems to have been more or less fairly dealt. Of course militants might well see things otherwise. Some foreign observers in Tehran are already speculating that the radical Islamic clerics, who now face not just a loss of their legislative veto but perhaps even the chance to play a significant minority role, may try to continue their battle underground, using tactics of subversion, sabotage and terrorism.

The radicals are already alleging that Rafsanjani intends to become cozier with Washington. That seems highly unlikely, at least soon or in any overt way.

Warmer relations with Europe and Japan almost certainly will be sought in an effort to attract desperately needed foreign investment and direct aid. But Iran’s official ideology still excoriates the United States as the Great Satan, the chief source and disseminator of all the supposed evils of modernism and secularism that the Islamic republic exists to oppose.

Even if Rafsanjani genuinely wanted to improve relations with Washington--and such a wish has yet to be evidenced--he would have to move cautiously in the aftermath of 13 years of virulently anti-American propaganda.

Washington should of course be ready to welcome any sign that Iran is prepared to moderate its policies, and quietly do what it can to encourage such tendencies. But it should also be wary about rushing to offer public approval of the newly strengthened Rafsanjani. Far better to wait to see whether a more pragmatic internal course includes an end to Iran’s support of terrorism abroad, a halt to persecution of the Bahai religious minority, a general improvement in the civil rights allowed all Iranians, a lifting of the outrageous death sentence that has been proclaimed against the novelist--and British citizen--Salman Rushdie.

There are many ways Rafsanjani can signal that basic political changes are under way. Washington should be watching carefully for them.