Iran’s Ruler Says Reformist Victory Is Valid

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Thursday ordered the hard-line council overseeing parliamentary elections to stop questioning the validity of ballots and accept the landslide win by reformers in the all-important Tehran district.

Khamenei’s decision ends months of infighting over results of the Feb. 18 election and clears the way for a historic shift of power in the new parliament to reformers, who wish to move the Islamic regime toward increased democracy and civil liberties.

There were indications that the conservative camp had been overruled. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, secretary of the Council of Guardians, had written to Khamenei that the watchdog panel had found many irregularities in a partial examination of ballots and needed more time to review the rest because it “could not confirm the fairness of the Tehran results.”

In reply, Khamenei directed the council to certify the results and quickly declare the victors “in the best national interest.” A member of the council later said on state television that the final list of winners could be announced Saturday.

Khamenei’s ruling suggests that he is seeking to move toward the political middle in a nation divided between conservatives who have dominated since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and increasingly assertive reformers, led by President Mohammad Khatami.

“Unfortunately, the leader has been identified with the rightist groups,” commented political scientist Davod Bavand, who teaches at the National Military Academy. “But last week he tried to assign himself somehow to the middle of the road.”

The ruling was in line with a calming speech Khamenei gave last week in which he said that all branches of the state should accept the people’s desire for reform, as long as it poses no threat to Iran’s Islamic principles.

In a carefully modulated address at Friday prayers that chastised extremists in both camps, Khamenei called on the conservatives and reformers to coexist.

The election results for Tehran had been considered vital to the reformers. Their best-known candidates had run there, led by Mohammad Reza Khatami, the president’s younger brother. The unusually long delay in approving the results in the capital had raised concern that the conservatives in the Council of Guardians were scheming to deprive top reformers of their due.

Of Tehran’s 30 seats, reformers had won 29, according to the initial count that was carried out by the Interior Ministry immediately after the election.

Due to the partial recount by the Council of Guardians, the scale of victory may change somewhat. The council deemed as many as several hundred out of 3,000 ballot boxes to be tainted by irregularities. Nevertheless, the broad outline of the overwhelming reformist win was expected to remain intact.

With Khamenei’s decision, Iran appears to have emerged from a tumultuous period. Outspoken publications have been closed down--the most recent on Tuesday, bringing the total to 17. Journalists, publishers and political activists have been summoned to court and in some cases jailed. A presidential advisor was shot, and there have been sinister rumors circulating of a right-wing coup being plotted against Khatami by elements of the government.

But the more appeasing tone emanating from Khamenei, coupled with his decision Thursday to end the recount in Tehran, leaves the reformers more confident than ever.

“Slowly, slowly, we are bringing this plane in for a landing,” said Ali Reza Nouri, a vascular surgeon set to enter parliament if the Tehran results are confirmed. Nouri ran as a stand-in for his jailed older brother, cleric Abdollah Nouri, one of the country’s most popular reform politicians.

Reformers, who secured the presidency for Khatami three years ago, expect that the new parliament will provide much more leeway to carry out their agenda: increasing democracy and civil liberties; carrying out economic reforms; and improving relations with other countries, including those in the West.

The reformers will still have to contend with the hard-liners in the Council of Guardians and the judiciary. However, for the first time in the 21-year history of the Islamic Republic, conservatives will not be in control of the parliament.

With the Tehran results added in, there should be about 200 reformers in the 290-member Majlis, or parliament, even though a dozen reformist wins elsewhere in the country have been reversed by the Council of Guardians.

One question is whether the former president, Hashemi Rafsanjani, will still be declared a winner after the recount in the capital. Rafsanjani, who had been the main hope of the conservatives, appeared to have barely squeaked into parliament during the initial vote tally, coming in 30th.

Khatami has been urging caution on the part of reformers during the long impasse over the Tehran election results. When journalists were being led away to prison last month, he told his supporters not to engage in demonstrations, fearing the hard-liners would use any unrest as an excuse to postpone the seating of parliament.

“Of course there were some dangerous moments,” recalled Ali Reza Nouri, “but we gave a signal to the people to remain calm and they did.”

Reformers say they see nothing surprising about the conservatives’ evident reluctance to peacefully relinquish power. It is “natural,” said University of Tehran political scientist Sadeq Zibakalam.

“Obviously, it was difficult for them to imagine that they would lose power and lose their grip on all their positions and their administrative status just because we’ve had an election,” he said. “During the last 20 years, they have been having a free ride, as it were.”

Zibakalam said he considered the fact that the conservatives now seem resigned to respecting the electorate’s decision to be a landmark for the Arab and Islamic world. The last session of the outgoing parliament has been scheduled for Wednesday.

“Islamic Iran is showing that the idea of democracy going hand in hand with Islam is not just something fanciful, it is a reality,” Zibakalam said. “Iran has shown that democracy is compatible with Islam.”

But even the reformers concede that there will be more struggles ahead. Nouri shrugged when asked about his brother Abdollah, a former interior minister who was sentenced in November to five years in prison for allegedly committing blasphemy in his newspaper, Khordad.

Nouri said he expects that his brother and the other jailed journalists could be freed when a new, less restrictive press law is enacted by the new parliament, which he said would be one of its first priorities.

“Probably the Guardians Council will resist [any change in the press law], but we are going to resist them as well,” he said wryly.

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* INTERNATIONAL AID: Over U.S. objections, the World Bank approved loans to Iran totaling $231 million. C4