Ahead of Vote, Iran Tense Yet Quiet

Vandals set fire to one of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami’s campaign offices. Students were arrested for chanting anti-government slogans. Thugs smashed windows at the campaign office of a conservative candidate.

And yet it is strangely quiet on the streets here, impossible to tell that in a week voters will go to the polls to either reelect the reform-minded Khatami to a four-year term or choose one of nine opposing conservative candidates.

There is no campaigning to speak of. No posters or placards along the streets and sidewalks. No debates. The president has kept the lowest profile of all. He has not left this capital to campaign and has held just one campaign event here.

“Mr. Khatami doesn’t have to introduce himself, the people already know him,” his chief of staff, Mohammed Ali Abtahi, said Wednesday. “We asked that no one put posters of Mr. Khatami on the walls.”

Dual images define the character of this Iranian election season as one of opposites. Arson and bare walls. Chanting and an absence of debate. Indifference and concern.

Political observers here say that few believe the outcome of the June 8 vote will change anything dramatically, with Khatami expected to win. Yet conservatives would like to reimpose control. And reformers still want their ideas advanced.

The contrasts are everywhere. This week, Khatami held his only rally. Some of his young supporters left the stadium chanting anti-government slogans--”Down with the mullahs’ regime!” and “Release all political prisoners!”--reflecting the divisions between Khatami’s reformist administration and the still-pervasive power of conservative clerics. The supporters were arrested.

But Wednesday, the pro-reform Islamic Iran Participation Front could not fill an auditorium for a rally in defense of women’s rights. Almost half the seats were empty by the time the president’s brother, Mohammad Reza Khatami, stood to speak.

“There is general apathy among all groups,” said a political analyst who asked not to be identified because he is involved in the election process. “Part of [President Khatami’s supporters] are disappointed because he has not taken more radical steps and measures. Conservatives are disillusioned too. They arrested people, they closed newspapers, and still things go on.”

Four years ago, things were quite different. The streets were filled with posters, and both sides were energized behind their candidates. The traditionalist clergy who control Iran had anointed parliament Speaker Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri as the president-in-waiting.

Khatami, a former minister of culture and Islamic guidance, became the darling of the reform movement, bringing together a cross-section of the electorate that had felt disenfranchised by the hard-line religious establishment.

Both sides were stunned by the outcome. Khatami’s supporters had never dreamed that the previously little-known cleric--removed from his Cabinet post because he was too liberal--would win.

“We thought he would not become president,” Abtahi, the chief of staff, said Wednesday. “We were interested in creating a minority party with Mr. Khatami as the pivot.”

Today, Khatami’s supporters are remaining quiet, and the conservative establishment has not endorsed any of the nine other candidates, who are not expected to seriously challenge the president.

Instead, the fight has become a strategic battle over the margin of victory, with both sides looking for an advantage. The reform camp says Khatami needs to match, or at least come close to, his stunning 1997 victory in which he garnered 20.7 million of the 29.7 million votes cast. Without that, he will lose political leverage--and still he has decided not to campaign.

“If he gets 15 million or 14 million votes, it is not a moral blow to him, [but] it is a disappointment,” the political analyst said. “Practically, it could mean his bargaining power with the conservatives is less.”

Under Iran’s Constitution, the president does not have extensive power. The supreme leader, conservative Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is the highest political and spiritual authority in the nation.

Even after the embarrassment of having their candidate trounced last time, the conservatives have undermined Khatami’s leadership, locking up some of his closest political allies, shutting down reform-minded newspapers and thwarting many of his efforts at social and political reforms.

As the two sides maneuver, tensions sometimes explode. On Tuesday, vandals in the city of Esfahan doused the local office of Khatami’s party with gasoline and set it on fire, the state IRNA news agency reported. A week earlier, the campaign headquarters of conservative candidate Abdollah Jasbi were ransacked.