National Agenda : Iran Embraces Paradoxes, if Not Western Culture : Still a ‘rogue state’ to some, it is a society in transition. Toward what is unclear.

Sixteen years after its tumultuous revolution, Iran is in transition. To just what, however, is unclear.

On one front, many of the revolution’s early images--from reverent theologians and chador-clad women to gun-toting zealots--are fast fading.

Last month, theology students protested the lack of experienced instructors and quality books--and demanded the seminary director be fired.

“A revolution within a revolution,” a Tehran journalist remarked.

Young men in military fatigues are not necessarily the ardent faithful; the latest run on the outfits was because of overproduction during the war with Iraq. Prices are cheap at new army surplus shops.

But, on other fronts, stereotypes of Iran as a rogue state are being reinforced.

More than 86,000 Iranians were arrested for “social corruption” last year, while more than a million were warned about errant behavior--improper Islamic attire perhaps, or possession of illegal videotapes.

Typical is a bystander’s account of young Basij volunteers--who gained fame as human minesweepers during the war and now work vice patrols--going after a group of scarved females on the ski slopes. Four of the eight girls turned out to be boys wearing Islamic cover to be with female friends.

And a new report by Amnesty International criticizes Iran for “a persistent pattern of imprisonment, political executions and suspected extrajudicial killings.”

“Access to lawyers is almost always denied and political detainees have spent up to 10 years behind bars before their relatives know where they are,” it concludes.

Supporters say the conflicting signs are evidence of rich paradoxes and changing times. Critics call them abhorrent contradictions of an authoritarian state.

Yet at Tehran’s International Book Fair last month, stalls with American books on subjects ranging from art to medicine and computers to philosophy were packed with customers.

“It’s a guaranteed sellout,” said an Iranian dealer of McGraw-Hill books.

And one of summer’s social highlights was the picnic, complete with volleyball, of the new Organization of American and Canadian University Graduates at a scenic park in north Tehran. About 70% of the U.S. graduates--men and women--are academics, but 30% are government officials, including ranking Cabinet officials.

But the same week as the graduates’ picnic, the government announced plans to build a memorial, including a museum, mosque and rest house, to commemorate “the miracle” that foiled “Desert One,” the 1980 U.S. attempt to rescue 52 American hostages held in Tehran. Eight American servicemen were killed when their aircraft collided.

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Iran has never been a place of a single monolithic mind-set. And its grapevine, always ripe with wild scenarios and vivid conspiracies, is among the world’s most active.

Many Iranians still believe that the CIA was behind the shah’s ouster and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s rise to power in 1979--if only because, they insist, neither could have happened without U.S. approval.

But even by Iranian standards, the paradoxes of life in the mid-1990s are setting confusing precedents.

In the arts, Ben Jonson’s 17th-Century drama “The Alchemist” just concluded a run at Tehran’s City Theater. But culture no longer plays just to the middle and upper classes.

The infamous slaughterhouse in Tehran’s poor southern suburbs was recently converted into the Bahman Center for performing arts. The buildings from which the odor of blood and death once drifted for blocks are now surrounded by vast gardens and adorned with wall-size pastel murals.

The holding area for cattle and sheep is now a theater. Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” is scheduled to run next fall, with Islamic dress adaptations and expletive deletions, of course.

Meanwhile, Iran’s film industry has something to brag about. Jafar Panahi, director of “The White Balloon,” won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival last month for best first film. Last year, Iranian movies won 27 international awards.

At the same time, however, 214 Iranian actors and directors petitioned the government this month to curb state control over movie production. They called for “the cancellation or serious reduction in the straitjacket regulations and complicated methods of supervision.” Everything--from plots to funding and production methods--requires approval from government agencies.

Restrictions even affect posters. An artist who painted her grandson’s teddy bears was recently denied permission to reproduce the work for friends--on grounds that animals do not wear clothes.

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Iran’s press has always been feisty. But newspapers now openly take potshots at leaders, policies and even each other.

Now, in a country that once reviled foreign culture as “Westoxication,” television has also opened up. For every hour of Iranian wrestling, there’s an hour of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot mysteries.

And press freedoms may soon expand. A bill introduced in Parliament last month calls for full freedom to publish criticism and protect sources. Officials would have no right to force publication of any item, nor to censor. And anyone who interferes with working reporters could face punishment.

But if the changes are approved, they may be merely cosmetic. The Ministry of Information and Intelligence regularly interrogates Iranian stringers for Western publications and drivers and interpreters who work with the Western press.

The measures are a step backward. Until recently, Iran did not have the Draconian press controls of Iraq or the clumsy surveillance of Syria. After the 1980-88 war with Iraq ended, foreign reporters could travel around the country. Lately, the government has started blocking trips at the last minute--no reason specified and no refunds on tickets.

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The atmospherics in Tehran are changing in big ways and small.

At the new Refah complex, a sprawling 24-hour department store, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” echoes through the sound system.

At the Nourozabad Race Course on Tehran’s outskirts, the stands are packed on Friday afternoon, the Muslim sabbath. Horse racing returned to Iran after the war, and since this spring so has legal betting.

“There’s nothing un-Islamic about betting. Islamic tradition allows betting on three sports--riding, shooting and swimming,” explained Morteza Faraji, director of Iran’s Equestrian and Equine Breeding Organization, as he watched Brave Boy win the second race.

“To encourage sport, the Prophet even advised it, at first between riders and owners, and then the practice spread.”

In a country that claims to have invented polo more than 2,000 years ago, riding is not just a sport for the old elites. Ayatollah Khomeini’s grandson rides regularly, as does Speaker of Parliament Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri. And President Hashemi Rafsanjani’s son races two of his horses at Nourozabad.

The biggest change in Iran is the overhaul of the judicial system launched last month. The reforms include scrapping the positions of powerful revolutionary prosecutors long feared for their arbitrary and uneven application of justice.

Magistrates will replace revolutionary prosecutors. And revolutionary tribunals will now be confined to cases involving national security breaches, offenses against the government and drug smuggling.

In contrast to these gradual changes, however, is a monumental obstacle called Salman Rushdie.

The Islamic Republic groped unsuccessfully all spring for a way out of the crisis produced by Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa invoking the death sentence against the author of “The Satanic Verses” for blasphemy. The fatwa remains the West’s barometer of where Iran is headed in its foreign relations.

New U.S. sanctions, which went into effect earlier this month, have triggered new talks between Iranian envoys and European Union officials. Resolution of the Rushdie affair is crucial to European ties and trade. But each inch forward has been matched by an inch backward.

Over the past two years, Tehran has promised that its agents will not kill Rushdie and has said it will not urge others to do so. The government has also pledged to behave according to international law, including condemnation of terrorism. Ranking officials now regularly repeat those pledges in public and advertise them weekly as new breakthroughs--which European diplomats say they are not.

The steps fall short of formally countermanding the fatwa , which officials claim they cannot do.

“The fatwa is irrevocable, but we will not send commandos to kill Rushdie,” said Nateq-Nuri, the parliamentary speaker. “That is up to the Muslims.”

He offered a third alternative. “If he dies himself, our and your problem will be resolved.”