All Sides in Iran Seize on Bush’s Condemnations

Battered by growing public frustration with the slow pace of economic and social reforms, Iran’s hard-line religious leaders are trying to use recent statements by President Bush to rally their nation to their side.

But so are their opponents.

From radicals calling for a separation of church and state to religious nationalists who want to preserve the Islamic character of the republic, virtually every political faction has tried to co-opt Bush’s sentiments to serve its own agenda.

Friday was the hard-liners’ turn.

While continuing to rely on the police and the courts to silence their opponents, the Islamic leadership assembled thousands of demonstrators here in the capital to condemn Bush’s most recent criticism of the regime--which cut to the core of the hard-liners’ greatest vulnerability: their lack of broad public support.

“We are facing a cruel and powerful [U.S.] government, and we have to be cautious and awake,” former President Hashemi Rafsanjani said during Friday prayers at Tehran University, according to Associated Press. “The most important thing is the presence of people.”

Conservative Islamic leaders have dominated Iran since shortly after the revolution in 1979, and continue to do so despite the 1997 election of moderate reformer Mohammad Khatami as president.

When Bush opened his own rhetorical front with Tehran in his State of the Union address in January, labeling Iran part of an “axis of evil,” members of the reform movement led by Khatami said the U.S. leader was undermining their efforts. The reformers argued--and still insist--that Bush had only managed to unify Iranians around the hard-liners by lumping this nation together with Iraq and North Korea as alleged supporters of terrorism.

In contemporary Iran, everyone in power is vulnerable. Both the reformers and hard-liners find their public support slipping because the economy is weak, corruption rampant and the pace of social change slow. But in that environment, reformers say they are concerned that Bush has given hard-liners ammunition to solidify the conservative base of support and made it impossible for the reform movement to advocate improved relations with the West. Khatami attended the rally Friday.

“When Bush named Iran as the axis of evil, the hard-liners became happy,” said Hamid Reza Jalaiepour, an influential reformer. “They can then mobilize the part of the country that supports them.... This sort of action is good for their control over the religious people.”

But at the same time, reformers have tried to use the fear of conservatives to rally their own diminished support.

Heshmatola Tabarzadi was in prison, held in solitary confinement because of his fight for separation of church and state, when Bush gave the State of the Union address. Tabarzadi thinks he was released because the regime wanted to counter the accusation that it is authoritarian.

“After Bush’s speech, the Islamic Republic felt very frustrated and the government wanted to win back public opinion,” he said. “If Mr. Bush did not make those comments, me and my friends would still be in prison.”

His friends agree.

“I don’t know if it was Bush’s idea, or if a consultant told him what to say, but when he said that a minority is governing the majority, that was very true,” said Parviz Safari, a colleague of Tabarzadi and another activist who was released from prison shortly after the speech.

Ibrahim Yazdi is leader of the Freedom Movement of Iran, a national religious party that wants democracy within the context of Islamic values. Still, the government views him as an enemy and has locked up many of his colleagues. He went to the United States for cancer treatment in November 2000 and was beyond the reach of the hard-liners. Many here say he has not been arrested since his return in April because of the pressure exerted by Bush’s statements.

Yazdi does not go that far, because to commend Bush or the United States in the present environment would bring political rebuke. Since the revolution, anti-American sentiment has been one of the psychological devices employed by the regime to rally support. But Yazdi is openly using Bush’s words to promote his agenda: democracy.

“Right now, I am emphasizing the foreign threat,” he said in an interview. “We are saying it is serious; we don’t know how serious, but serious.”

His prescription for addressing that threat: internal reconciliation between all political factions. “We must reduce political tension internally, release political prisoners, cancel verdicts against newspapers,” he said.

He also said the threat posed by Bush requires Iran to better adapt to the post-Sept. 11 world. “We have better relations with Europe,” he said.

Last week, Bush expressed U.S. support for Iranians rallying behind a popular cleric who resigned to protest the paralyzing control the conservative clergy held over civil and elected institutions. In blunt language, Bush said the ruling Islamic clerics have produced “uncompromising and destructive” policies.

“Iranian students, journalists and parliamentarians are still arrested, intimidated and abused for advocating reform or criticizing the ruling regime,” he said. “Independent publications are suppressed. And talented students and professionals, faced with the dual specter of too few jobs and too many restrictions on their freedom, continue to seek opportunities abroad rather than help build Iran’s future at home.”

The comments promoted angry calls for the U.S. to stop interfering in the nation’s internal affairs--and for Iranians to rally around the leadership.

“America cannot do a damn thing against Iran,” read one banner at Friday’s demonstration. “The great Satan is not able to harm Iranians,” read another.