Discontent Simmers in Iran

Iranians have voted overwhelmingly for greater freedom. The odds are overwhelming that they won’t get it anytime soon.

President Mohammad Khatami has been elected to a second term by an even greater margin than four years ago, winning a remarkable 77% of the vote against nine other candidates.

Now, as in 1997, Khatami embodies the long-suppressed hopes of those desperate for relief from the stifling controls imposed by the conservative Islamic clerical establishment.

In his first term, Khatami expressed cautious support for a less-repressive society. Few tangible changes followed. The conservative clerics who run Iran grudgingly tolerate more open political discussion. But the judiciary they control is quick to shut down publications and jail dissidents who become too critical of the clerics’ harsh rule.

Likewise, elections are more or less free--as long as elected representatives don’t try to make any changes that might threaten the absolute authority of the hardliners.

The result is a rising level of frustration, especially among the young, women and the better-educated. A recent poll at one of Tehran’s major universities found 80% of the students eager to emigrate for a better life.

Yet constraints on personal freedom and weariness with theocratic rule are only part of the problem.

An economy weakened by corruption, cronyism and centralized decision-making has been unable to provide the jobs needed by a population that has more than doubled in the 22 years since the Islamic revolution, to 65 million. The recent rise in the price of oil, which accounts for three-fourths of Iran’s export earnings, has helped ease conditions. But the structural inefficiencies and mismanagement that are at the root of the economic problem remain.

The Islamic revolution ended Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s autocratic rule. Now conservatives control the security services, armed forces, judiciary and, through the senior clerics who make up the powerful Council of Guardians, the fate of all legislation. Their power equals the late shah’s.

Like the shah, however, Iran’s theocratic rulers may find that this power, while great, is not necessarily enduring. In successive parliamentary and presidential elections, Iranians have voted massively for change in their institutions as well as in their daily lives. Conservatives are inviting an explosion if they continue to scorn the evidence of growing popular discontent.