Frustrated by Deadlock, Iranians Seek New Voice

The young police officer charged into the crowd, his knuckles white from gripping the long barrel of a tear gas gun he didn’t want to fire. His shouts were lost in the din, so he hollered louder until he could be heard: “Please, please, brothers and sisters, leave here! Leave here now!”

But no one left.

Instead, more and more people poured into the streets around Tehran University, defying a government ban, to mark the third anniversary of student demonstrations that were violently crushed by police. And it wasn’t just students this time around. It was elderly women with their black chadors pulled tight. The disabled on crutches. A boy on a bicycle.

“We aren’t afraid,” the boy said. “They can’t frighten us.”

This is the Islamic Republic of Iran that the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini left behind, a land divided, snagged in the struggle for the soul of a nation. Hard-liners and conservatives, radicals and reformers continue playing out a now decades-old fight for dominance, with neither side victorious.

But the chasm between the camps has narrowed as public consensus forms around some broad ideas: the need for government accountability and for citizens rights, to name two.

And behind that consensus there is talk of a new force emerging. The Iranians call it the “Third Force,” a movement that encompasses almost everyone who is not in power.

It is a social force, a political force. Religious groups, reform groups, radicals and conservatives alike are claiming title to this emerging power. The Third Force appears to cover everyone who is disgusted and disaffected, which, judging from the crowd outside Tehran University, cuts a wide swath across the social, political and economic strata of Iranian society.

It is easier to say what the Third Force is against: It is against the hard-liners who rule the country by decree, elevating themselves above the law by controlling the police, the military and the courts. It is against a dynamic that emphasizes politics over policy, and it condemns everyone in power, the right and the left, for failing to combat the social, political and economic turmoil that drags Iran down as a nation and makes daily life difficult for its people.

On these points, almost everyone agrees--hard-liners excluded.

“In my opinion, the Third Force is a political trend in our country,” said Taha Hashemi, a moderate conservative who wears religious robes and edits a daily newspaper. “They are criticizing the actions of the political parties. They are saying the parties were not successful.”

Hamid Reza Jalaeipour is an influential reformist and eternal optimist who sees his nation moving toward democracy. “The Third Force is the youth that are disappointed,” he said, referring to the 65% of the population that is 25 or younger. “In some aspects, I am speaking for the Third Force too.”

The dissatisfaction has reached into the heart of the reform movement, which people had hoped would open the economy and promote freedom of expression. Its largest faction, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, has threatened to quit the government and parliament--a move, if taken, that would allow it to claim membership in the Third Force too.

“If they [hard-liners] stall reforms, then only two ... choices remain: dictatorship or uprising,” Mohammad Reza Khatami, the brother of President Mohammad Khatami and leader of the Participation Front, said in a speech last week.

On the surface, little has changed in Iran since Mohammad Khatami was elected in a landslide last year to a second term. The social reforms that Khatami pressed for in his first years in office, such as the easing of restrictions on relations between young men and women, are still in place, and in some cases have advanced.

And as during his first years in office, his agenda and his supporters are harassed and intimidated by the security apparatus. Newspapers are shut down, journalists jailed, reform politicians arrested and jailed.

The push and pull between the Iranian masses and the self-anointed religious leadership is most evident in the streets, where men and women are constantly challenging the bounds of what is considered acceptable--while the morality police try to push back.

“Keep your hejab [modest Islamic dress] proper!” a police officer shouted over a loudspeaker above his cruiser as he patrolled in front of the Golastan Shopping Center in west Tehran one recent evening. “Keep your hejab proper!”

Plainclothes police with walkie-talkies and handcuffs on their belts patrolled through the crowd outside, frightening women with a glance.

But inside, in the shops, window after window was filled with a defiant theme: red. Red women’s clothing and accessories. Even the religious garb intended to guard female modesty was red, not the black that religious authorities prefer.

At the time of the shah’s secular regime, women wore the black chador as a show of political defiance. Today, they wear red.

“I have no problem selling red shoes, red pants, red blouses, red bags,” said Mehran Mohammadi, 28, the owner of a small boutique. “If they [the vice police] want to do something, they will go after the person wearing it.”

But he does not sell many of the loose-fitting shirts women must wear over their other clothes, known as a rapouje, in red. “They don’t feel free enough,” he said of his female customers.

Fashion may be the most visible manifestation of Iran’s turmoil, but it is in some ways the most superficial. The major struggle, the one pulling at the fabric of the Islamic Republic, bears directly on the two-tiered system set up by Khomeini: the secular and religious institutions, with the latter having final say over everything.

Hard-liners control the religious establishment but appear increasingly isolated and unpopular. They are loath to relinquish power. Yet there is a growing chorus for creating civil institutions, elected by and responsible to the public.

More fundamentally, there is growing opposition to the concept of velayet faghih--an ideological cornerstone of the republic that gives the supreme leader religious as well as political ascendancy. It effectively places him and his religious institutions above the law.

The concept was broadly supported in the early days of the republic when Khomeini, a larger-than-life figure, played the role of the faghih, or supreme jurist. The current supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, does not command the same regard as his predecessor.

“The desire for the Iranian people is for freedom, human rights and justice,” said Heshmatola Tabarzadi, 43, a radical opposition leader who has been jailed many times for his political activities. “But those in power are against the people. The situation in Iran today has changed dramatically. At the start of the revolution, 90% of the people supported Ayatollah Khomeini. Today, 90% are against Mr. Khamenei. That is the difference.”

Fariborz Raisdana, a social pathologist and leftist political activist, said that from his perspective, the public wants to see a separation of church and state, a principle that he thinks is at the core of the Third Force. “We want to see our problems solved not with anti-Islamic policies but with non-Islamic policies,” he said.

It is impossible to know in a society such as Iran’s exactly what the masses are thinking. But the political leadership--and to some extent, the hard-line leadership--does react to public pressure. So it is telling that Khatami and his reformers aren’t alone in calling for creation of civil institutions. So are supporters of hard-liners. The conservative newspaper Resaalat recently called for all factions to work together.

“The reform movement has been unable to satisfy the young people and the secularists, but it has captured the conservative young people,” reformist Jalaeipour said.

There are even some signs that the hard-liners are moving, ever so slightly, under the weight of public opinion.

Key opposition leaders have not been jailed. Workers have formed trade unions, students are mobilizing, and thousands of nongovernmental organizations have opened in the last few years--groups that take on everything from rampant prostitution in the capital to the devastating air pollution that also plagues the city.

And then there was the recent resignation of the Ayatollah Jalaluddin Taheri, a senior cleric and Friday prayer leader in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, who complained about “deception, unemployment, inflation, the diabolical gap between the rich and poor, bribery, cheating, growing drug consumption, the incompetence of authorities and the failure of the political structure.”

What was even more surprising was that although the hard-liners banned the media from reporting reaction to the resignation, and cautioned that such actions could empower Iran’s enemies, Khamenei said that he too shared concerns over corruption and poverty.

“We are now at what I call a standstill,” said Ibrahim Yazdi, an opposition leader and founder of the Freedom Movement. “No one can move forward; no one can move backward. Each has tried to eliminate the other. They have failed.”

Iranians are patient people, or at least their political leaders are. Opposition leaders say that after centuries of despotic rule, change will come but must by necessity come slowly. Unlike the revolution that unseated the shah, they say, it is a civic movement that will, eventually, sweep the hard-liners away.

And if that is to happen, observers say, it will be because of the Third Force.

“In 45 years, I have not seen this kind of movement,” said Raisdana, the activist. “Twenty-five years ago, you would never find Muslim students in favor of separation of church and state. Today, many people support that.... Disappointment is good, because it will lead people to political action.”

Still, that remains the optimistic view. The hard-liners, operating in a vacuum of public support, have shown no willingness to cede their unchecked authority--a reality that opposition leaders say will have to change if the country is to avoid slipping into chaos.

In a fashionable Tehran neighborhood, a cultural center recently opened where young people flocked to watch movies, discuss literature, learn to paint.

The hard-liners shut it down. They didn’t give any reason--and they didn’t have to. “They are afraid,” said a supporter of the center.

“They are afraid of anyplace that brings people together.”