Anti-Americanism Marks Voting in Iran

There was a distinct whiff of anti-Americanism in the air Friday as Iranians flocked to the polls to elect their fifth parliament since the takeover of the country by Islamic extremists 17 years ago.

The main drama of the vote is whether a slate of pragmatist economic reformers aligned with President Hashemi Rafsanjani will gain ground against a strictly traditional clerical faction under the current parliament speaker, Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri. Never before in the Islamic republic’s history have voters been given such a clear choice of political programs.

But the election to choose the 270-seat Majlis, or parliament, also was trumpeted as a test of revolutionary fervor and as one more chance for Iranians to defy the “arrogant power”--the United States--especially since their country is under a new threat of international isolation after the recent wave of deadly bombings in Israel.

For the week preceding the election, newspapers close to the mullahs who now control parliament were urging voters to come out in large numbers, calling every vote cast “a bullet straight to the heart of our enemies.”

“America and Israel have increased their propaganda pressure on Iran with the aim of making people less interested in the election,” said Rafsanjani after casting his vote at the hall where the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of Iran’s Islamic revolution, used to greet visitors. “But experience shows that it has had the opposite effect.”

By early today, the government was indicating that turnout was heavy. More than half of Iran’s 63 million people were eligible to cast ballots, in part because the voting age was recently lowered to 15. Definitive results are not expected until next week.

That the election happened four days after the United States accused Iran of providing financial and tactical support to Palestinian militants in Israel--charges vehemently denied here--helped fan an anti-American mood that affected even ordinary Iranians.

“At the beginning of the revolution, America began to be against Iran. From that time, we realized that we cannot trust America, and we began to be against America,” said 28-year-old Bezad Holedih, a Ministry of Jihad (Holy War) worker standing among voters at the Amir Mosque in central Tehran.

*

On an individual level, the rare American who visits Tehran is welcomed amiably and treated as a curiosity. But the official view that the United States is Iran’s implacable and irrational foe is seldom questioned.

People seem genuinely bewildered by U.S. hostility toward them. One young man confronted an American journalist to say that Iran is always portrayed as a “barbarian” country by U.S. media. Another voter, a mother holding an infant to her black chador, made a distinction between the U.S. government and its population.

“The United States government is our enemy, not the people of America,” Zarah Ali Akbari said. “Some of them are against us, but not all.”

Years after the uprising that deposed longtime U.S. ally Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the specter of a sinister United States awaiting its chance to crush Iran remains a fixture in many minds.

Clerics at Friday prayers and state-controlled media have provided a steady diet of anti-Americanism, making it a central tenet of the regime.

The only exception occurred after Rafsanjani became president in 1988, when there were hints of a thaw with the United States. Iran helped secure the release of Western hostages in Lebanon and tacitly assisted the U.S.-led alliance battling Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

But according to government officials here, the Clinton administration did not sufficiently reciprocate, and the result was a rehardening of attitudes.

Since the election of the Republican-led U.S. Congress in 1994, U.S.-Iranian relations, never good, have been close to rock bottom.

*

A recent cause celebre for the Iranians has been House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s proposal to appropriate $20 million for covert activities to undermine the Iranian regime. Parliament members--simultaneously indignant and amused by the paltry sum--derisively voted to spend the exact equivalent to counter the U.S. effort.

Although the Rafsanjani slate that appeared on Friday’s ballot is considered slightly more open to the West than the current Majlis, there is no indication that there will be any attempt to repair the U.S.-Iran relationship any time soon.

In the current climate, diplomats said, that would be political suicide.

Nevertheless, one occasionally detects a note of regret among Iranian officials, many of whom lived in the United States before the revolution to escape the shah’s secret police.

“There should be some lessening of tensions, a de-escalation,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, a 1981 graduate of San Francisco State University. “But, logically speaking, there should be a willingness on both sides.”