Electoral Victory, Political Defeat

3 downloads 0 Views 360KB Size Report
May 24, 2013 - mediates between Majles and. Guardian ...... lim suffering. ... popular and spontaneous act after being tipped off by pious people.” See In-.
Problems Confronting Contemporary Democracies Scott Mainwaring Douglas Chalmers

Published by University of Notre Dame Press

For additional information about this book http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9780268086886

Access provided by New York University (24 May 2013 20:41 GMT)

6 Electoral Victory, Political Defeat A Failed Democratic Transition in Iran Mirjam Künkler

The Islamic Republic of Iran presents a puzzle for students of democratic transitions: in four consecutive elections, a democratic-minded opposition won overwhelming majorities at the ballot box. For a period of four years, these electoral victories gave the opposition control of the national legislature, the presidency, and most municipal governments. Polity IV, an annual index that scores countries according to their degree of political contestation on a scale between –10 (most authoritarian) and +10 (most democratic), placed Iran at +3 for seven consecutive years, 1997 to 2003.1 This score meant that Iran was a more competitive and open regime than any Eastern European country had ever been between 1945 and 1989. It also enjoyed a higher score during those seven years than most Latin American countries between 1945 and the early 1980s.2 With a democratically minded movement in charge of the presidency and the parliament, in addition to a relatively neutral army, many observers would have expected a transition toward democracy. Why then was this fate denied to Iran? What precluded this competitive authoritarian regime from opening up to a successful democratic transition? This chapter examines the politics of the Iranian reform movement, why it won repeatedly at the ballot box, but why these electoral 166

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 167

victories failed to translate into political ones. In a 1990 article about the tasks of a democratic opposition in an authoritarian regime, Alfred Stepan wrote that “guarding zones of autonomy against the regime” was one such core task.3 The failure of the Iranian reform movement can be attributed, I argue, to the opposition’s failure to achieve and guard zones of autonomy.

Loss of Hegemony

In the 1997 presidential elections, the Islamic Republic experienced a consequential surprise: against the endorsement of Ali Akbar NateqNouri (then parliamentary speaker) by the republic’s Supreme Leader (vali-e faqih) Khamenei and the majority of government officials, almost 70 percent of the votes were cast in support of Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Khatami, who had served as minister for culture and Islamic guidance from 1982 to 1986 and 1989 to 1992. Khatami had run on a platform of political and cultural liberalization, declaring that he would direct his efforts toward “strengthening the rule of law,” fostering a political climate conducive to the growth of civil society, and defending constitutionally prescribed civil liberties.4 Frustrated by the republic’s strict cultural laws, limits on political pluralism, and enduring economic hardship, many Iranians saw in Khatami a candidate that would satisfy the profound need for change. The moderate cleric’s promise of reform especially attracted women, young people, and urban educated middle-class voters. Around the world, journalists and political commentators interpreted Khatami’s victory as the beginning of a struggle that might eventually lead to the political, cultural, and economic liberalization, and possibly democratization, of the country. Crucially, Khatami’s electoral support was not limited to urban youth and women. Evidence suggests that Khatami was initially popular even among a majority of the military and a substantial segment of the ‘ulama (religious authorities). According to a poll commissioned by the Iranian parliament in 1999,5 80 percent of the members of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) favored Khatami’s agenda, whereas only 9 percent endorsed the more conservative candidate, Nateq-Nouri.6

168 | Mirjam Künkler

Official records from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance indicate that 73 percent of the IRGC, the social base of Iran’s current president Ahmadinejad, and 70 percent of the Basij (voluntary force) had voted for Khatami in 1997.7 Among the clergy, Khatami enjoyed similarly unexpected support. In Qom, the traditional nucleus of the country’s hawzeh (religious seminaries), Khatami achieved the phenomenal result of 58.7 percent.8 Here he ranked not a few but 25 percentage points higher than the candidate favored by the Supreme Leader, “who for months had been praised by the regime’s propaganda—particularly intense in Qom—as the embodiment of the ‘true Islam.’”9 As political commentators noted retrospectively in the country’s reformist newspapers, the strong support for an oppositional candidate in Qom pointed to the possibility of a quietist clerical resistance to the regime and to what Alfred Stepan likes to call “the loss of the revolution’s ideological hegemony” in Gramscian terms. Given the fact that the Guardian Council, which is directly and indirectly appointed by the Supreme Leader, can vet all candidates for electoral office and given that the regime had promoted in the statecontrolled media its own candidate for weeks, the chances for the success of any alternative candidate were slim.10 Khatami’s win was all the more remarkable in light of the fact that Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri already functioned in a position of political influence as speaker of parliament,11 while Khatami had been demoted in 1992 to the politically insignificant post of director of the National Library. What looked like a done deal weeks in advance turned out to become the election with the largest turnout in the republic’s history and, moreover, the largest percentage of votes ever cast for any candidate. There is hardly a democratic transition in the twentieth century in which reformers in the government reached 70 percent of popular support—an explicit, unequivocal mandate for political change. Khatami and the growing reform movement behind him received this mandate not once or twice but in four consecutive elections. To add to Khatami’s 1997 success, in the country’s first municipal elections in 1999 an umbrella coalition of reformist parties12 that supported his agenda for greater freedom of speech, fewer restrictions on cultural goods (music, cinema, literature), and a more pragmatic foreign policy, won 80 to 90 percent of the 200,000 contested seats,13 as well as 215 of 290 seats in

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 169

the 2000 parliamentary elections.14 In 2001 Khatami was elected for a second term, not, as in 1997, with 70 percent of the vote but an astounding 78 percent—a figure rarely reached in democratic systems, let alone for the opposition in any given authoritarian regime. We can be sure that these numbers were not exaggerated upward. If anything, the ultraconservatives had a strong interest in manipulating electoral outcomes via the Guardian Council in a way to obfuscate the extent to which their preferred candidates had been defeated. In addition to the extraordinarily high levels of support for Khatami, the four elections between 1997 and 2001, together with the 1996 parliamentary election, featured the largest turnout of all elections in the republic’s history. In this regard, the 1997 and 2001 presidential elections were particularly noteworthy: while previous presidential elections witnessed a 50 to 58 percent turnout, in 1997 and 2001 turnout rose to an outstanding 80 percent and 70 percent, respectively. In less than three years (1997– 2000), Khatami and his reformist supporters in parliament and the municipal councils had transformed Iran from a relatively closed autocracy into a diarchy, where reformist forces controlled the executive and the legislature, while ultraconservatives held on to the judiciary, as well as several political councils appointed by the Supreme Leader. The emergence of this diarchy is nothing short of phenomenal.15 Figure 6.1 offers an overview of this system of rule. What could Khatami possibly promise to the Iranian people that made him such a popular presidential candidate? The core of Khatami’s agenda consisted of strengthening the rule of law and those political institutions directly elected by the people. These are, in principle, the parliament, the presidency, and the Assembly of Experts, which is a clerical body that elects the Supreme Leader and as stipulated in the Constitution convenes once a year to review the Supreme Leader’s political performance. Theoretically, it can unseat the Supreme Leader, but in the republic’s thirty-three year history it has never exerted a serious check on the Supreme Leader’s power. Iran’s Constitution of 1979, modeled on the French 1958 Constitution, comprises all political rights and civil liberties conventionally associated with Dahl’s minimum conditions of democracy.16 Articles 24 and 25 grant freedom of expression, Article 26 guarantees the freedom

1993 (Pres.)

1996 (Parl.)

1997 (Pres.)

1998 (AE)

39.1% (after revision 16.82%)

98.32

46.4%

h

25.94% (after revision 16.63%)

67.35%

65% 65%

78%

71.3%a

80%

98.77%

67.77%

2001 (Pres.)

2000 (Parl.)

1999 (Mun.)

n.p.d.

49%

n.p.d.

2003 (Mun.) 35%b

2006 (AE.) ~30%

2008 (parl)

35%e

2009 (pres.)

~60% 57.21% 85.21% n.p.d. 41.08% 99.16%

n.p.d.c n.p.d.d

2005 2006 (Pres.) (Mun.)

51.21%f 62.84% ~60% 44.09% 99.21% 65% (after revision 33.31%)

30%

2004 (Parl.)

Source: Iran Data Portal (www.princeton.edu/irandataportal/), unless otherwise noted. n.p.d. = no precise data. a. See Menas Associates Limited & Future Alliances International, special report on Iran’s 6th Majles Elections: A Supplementary Report, June 2000. The figure is composed of 44 percent gained by the Khordad Front, 17 percent by the Kargozaran (Rafsanjani’s technocratic faction), and votes secured by reformist independent candidates. b. This is the combined percentage all three reformist candidates received in the first round. See Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Iran after the June 2005 Presidential Election, Middle East Program Occasional Papers, Summer 2005, www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/mepopsummer051.pdf. c. 230,000 candidates ran for approximately 110,000 seats. d. 165 candidates ran for 86 seats. e. There is strong reason to believe that these results were tampered with. The subsequent protests throughout Iran suggest that the support for the reformist candidate(s) was much higher than the official election results established. f. Many voters expressed their disappointment with the reform project by submitting invalid ballots. Six percent of all ballots were spoiled. g. Only 4 of 128 were approved. See Wilfried Buchta, Who Rules Iran? The Structure of Power in the Islamic Republic (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2000), 36. h. The Guardian Council accepted fewer than half of the 396 applicants and none of the nine women who nominated themselves. In the past, would-be candidates had to demonstrate their attainment of the mujtahed rank, equivalent to an M.A. degree in Islamic learning, which authorizes Qur’anic interpretation. But in 1998 all potential candidates had to demonstrate the proper political inclination as well. The council allowed a number of incumbent Assembly of Experts members to run again, even though they failed to demonstrate the required level of religious learning. The council argued that incumbents could run again because Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had approved their credentials previously. Yet reformist clerics, such as Mehdi Karrubi, who had been a member of the Assembly in the 1980s and whose credentials therefore also had been “approved” by Khomeini, were disqualified.

Percentage of disqualified 35.23% 96.9% candidates (after revision 15.22%)

g

Votes for pragmatist 28% 26.34% 30% 70% 3 of 86 (Kargozaran)/reformist (IIFP, MRM, Hambastegi) opposition to regime conservatives Voter turnout 57.71% 50.66% 71.10% 79.92% 46%

1992 (Parl.)

Table 6.1 Parliamentary, Presidential, Municipal, and Assembly of Experts (AE) Elections, 1992– 2009

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 171

ELECTORATE 290 representatives; can with 2/3 majority pass legislation vetoed by Guardian Council on to Expediency Council

mediates between Majles and Guardian Council; since 1997 also asked to offer advice to Supreme Leader on major policies

6 mujtaheds + 6 secular lawyers; acts as upper house

86 mujtaheds elected for 8-year terms; reviews actions of supreme leader

Figure 6.1 Iran’s Political System

to form and join organizations, Article 27 grants freedom of assembly, and Article 23 even imparts freedom of belief.17 Significantly, however, all rights and liberties have validity “in accordance with Islamic principles,” a clause found in each of these articles. In other words, if any of these rights are found to contradict “Islamic principles,” they may be abrogated. Due to this limitation, the Guardian Council, the judiciary, and governmental ministries circumvent abiding by these constitutional injunctions if it is politically, socially, or economically opportune to do so. Moreover, checks and balances are allocated in a way that the Supreme Leader’s office may interfere in most political processes. All legislation by the Majles (parliament) needs to be approved by the Guardian Council.18 The Guardian Council consists of six Islamic jurists appointed by the Supreme Leader and six constitutional lawyers confirmed by parliament from a list provided by the head of the judiciary, who is

172 | Mirjam Künkler

also appointed by the Supreme Leader. If the Guardian Council vetoes a given bill, the parliament may pass the bill on to a second council, the Expediency Council, all of whose members are appointed by the Su preme Leader.19 Besides functioning as an upper legislative house, the Guardian Council has a second important function: it may vet electoral candidates. Any candidate running for the Assembly of Experts, the parliament, or the presidency who does not meet the Guardian Council’s approval may be disqualified. The Supreme Leader is the commander in chief. Foreign and security policy is determined in the National Security Council, which comprises the president, certain ministers, and other members the Supreme Leader appoints. Budgetary power lies with the parliament, but the Expediency Council passes its own budgets that cover the Supreme Leader’s office, as well as certain security agencies. Although the polity features important republican elements, such as direct elections for the president, the parliament, the Assembly of Experts, and since 1999 the municipal councils, as well as meaningful civil liberties and political rights, the republican elements can be qualified, limited, denied, and overruled by bodies appointed by the Supreme Leader— most important, the Guardian Council, the Expediency Council, and the head of the judiciary.

Parties and the Press: Opportunities for Civil and Political Society

From the beginning of his presidency, Khatami pursued two initiatives aimed at strengthening the link between civil society and the political elite: the development of a robust multiparty system with strong roots in the electorate, and the promotion of a multifaceted press. While serving as director of the National Library, Khatami had written extensively on the need for political pluralism and dialogue. Dialogue and exchange were necessary to build peaceful social relations. What came to represent his approach to both domestic and foreign policy was his view that “life is a collective effort which cannot go forward except through debate, critique, and cooperation, and by recognizing the limitations and relativity of all perspectives.”20 Islam could be a fruitful source for political

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 173

and social ethics. In contrast to his opponents in the Supreme Leader’s office, Khatami felt that this ethics must not be imposed through moralistic laws and the careful selection of information imparted to the public but instead that Islam should be part of an open discursive environment that would allow citizens to recognize the kind of life they would want to live on their own terms: “Religion is a cradle and support for the growth of reason, freedom, and liberality.”21 Khatami’s initiatives aimed at strengthening civil society and political participation were inaugurated chiefly through three mechanisms. First, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance issued a number of new licenses for newspapers. Second, Khatami’s administration initiated for the first time in the republic’s history the holding of municipal elections for village and city councils, which had hitherto been appointed by provincial governors. Third, in preparation for the 1999 municipal elections, his minister of interior encouraged the registration of political parties to pave the way for the development of a multiparty system. The Press Upsurge

Toward the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, the number of registered publications in the country was as low as 62. By 1994 it had risen to 500, and four years later it reached 850.22 Thanks to the eagerness of Khatami’s minister of culture and Islamic guidance, Ataollah Mohajerani, the ministry accepted 1,396 applications for new publications between 1999 and 2001 alone.23 Bayat claims that the reform era gave birth to 2,228 new titles, among them 174 new dailies.24 In 1999 newspapers for the first time reached a circulation of one million.25 Between 1998 and 2000, Tehran’s press landscape alone included about 30 dailies. Jame‘eh (Society), published by the University of Tehran sociology professor Hamidreza Jalaeipour, became the country’s “first civil society daily.” Although it was closed down numerous times by the conservativedominated judiciary, the reformist Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance issued new licenses that allowed its editors and journalists to reopen the newspaper under different names. Between spring 1998 and April 2000, Jame‘eh was reincarnated as Tus, Neshat, Asr-e Azadegan,

174 | Mirjam Künkler

and Sobh-e Emruz.26 Other reformist newspapers included Khordad, Fath, Mosharekat, Arya, and Azad. Also among the new media were a sizable number of women’s newspapers and magazines, with 200 registered in 2000 and 286 by 2002. The daughter of former President Rafsanjani launched a women’s daily, called Zan (Woman).27 The Formation of New Parties

Many of the newspapers were created as direct organs of the multitude of political factions that registered as parties, following Khatami’s announcement that his minister of interior would more willingly than his predecessors issue the necessary license.28 Parties had been discouraged since the early years of the revolution when the multiplicity of parties competing with each other were perceived as threatening the consolidation of the regime. Khomeini at that time had pushed Iran toward a one-party state led by the Islamic Republic Party and in the mid-1980s after the latter’s dissolution proclaimed that parties were divisive and un-Islamic. His successor, too, made no secret of his antiparty stance. Even in 1997, when there was already widespread demand among the public for the existence of parties and the promotion of a strong party system, Khamenei proclaimed that elections alone displayed the political growth of the Iranian nation and that the public did not need political parties and their “materialist” leaders.29 Even the chairman of the commission issuing party licenses in the Ministry of Interior under Khatami’s predecessor stated that the people did not have much need for parties because there were already other groups that enjoyed the public trust, such as the clergy.30 Yet with the announcement of the inauguration of municipal elections to be held in 1999, Khatami made some headway toward creating a climate in which the need for parties was more widely shared, even among his opponents. The municipal elections had been stipulated in Article 100 of the 1979 Constitution but had never been held. Now, in conformity with Khatami’s campaign slogan “Rule according to the Constitution,” his administration worked hard to put in place the required infrastructure to hold elections.31 Suddenly, it became important for the competing factions to identify issues of local concern able to mobilize potential voters and to recruit candidates willing to run for

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 175

the thousands of positions that would now be elected instead of appointed. As reformist factions sought party licenses from Khatami’s reformist ministry, conservative factions followed suit. The municipal elections raised the importance of nationwide networks between likeminded local organizations to a new level. Khatami’s own brother, Reza Khatami, founded the Iranian Islamic Participation Front (IIPF), a party that became the heart of reformist coalitions during the following years. The IIPF advocated absolute adherence to the rule of law, a restriction of the powers of the Supreme Leader to a mere supervisory function without veto powers, and a stronger role for the institutions that enjoy electoral legitimacy. Consequently, it aimed to institute precisely circumscribed guidelines for the Guardian Council’s use of the veto against parliamentary bills, as well as of its supervisory function in the republic’s elections. Another important faction that sided with the reformists in 2000 (but not in 2004 when many reformist parties boycotted the elections in light of vast disqualifications by the Guardian Council) is the Executives of Construction Party (Hezb-e Kargozaran-e Sazandegi). This faction consisted of mostly pragmatic technocrats associated with former President Rafsanjani, such as Ataollah Mohajerani who became Khatami’s minister of culture and Islamic guidance, and Tehran mayor Gholam-Hossein Karbaschi, who emerged as Khatami’s right hand during the 1997 presidential bid. The mayor had served as Khatami’s campaign manager and used the vast resources of the municipality of Tehran and its daily newspaper, Hamshahri (Fellow-Citizen), with a circulation of several hundred thousand at that time and over one million by 2005, to boost public opinion in favor of Khatami. Two other groups were instrumental to Khatami’s growing reform movement. One was the Office for Fostering Unity among the Islamic Student Associations (Daftar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat, or DTV), the country’s largest student umbrella organization, comprising, in 1999, 1,437 student associations nationwide. It published a newspaper, Azar, as well as seven hundred local student magazines, and ran its own news agency, ISNA.32 The organization had played a key role in the seizure of the U.S. embassy in 1979 but changed its orientation in the mid-1990s when it became one of the most important supporters of Khatami’s reform efforts during his first term.

176 | Mirjam Künkler

The second group was the Center for Strategic Studies, which was founded by a group of revolutionaries-turned-reformers, including Ma shallah Shamsolvaezin, who wrote for a number of reformist newspapers, and Said Hajjarian, founder and first deputy minister of the revolutionary Ministry of Information. The Center for Strategic Studies was affiliated with the Office of the President, and it became Tehran’s intellectual nucleus for policy-driven discussions about the reform movement’s performance and strategies. In total, ninety-five new political parties and organizations were registered between 1997 and 2000. The reformist-dominated parliament of 2000 – 2004 also passed a bill for the registration of labor unions and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). A registration wave of new labor unions followed. In 2000 – 2001, 100 employers’ guilds and 120 workers’ organizations officially registered. Months after Khatami’s win, the first professional association of journalists was founded, and journalists even managed to establish the Association for the Defense of Free Press, which was headed by dissident cleric Mohsen Kadivar until his imprisonment. Significantly, as Asef Bayat notes, in contrast to NGOs in most other countries of the region, “NGOs [in Iran] were valued more for their political and democratizing potential than for charitable and developmental roles.”33 Clerical Associations

Before the registration of new parties in 1998, factional politics had been dominated by two clerical organizations, the Society of Combatant Clergy (Jame‘eh-ye Rohaniyat-e Mobarez, JRM) and the Assembly of Combatant Clerics (Majma’e Rohaniyun-e Mobarez, MRM). Initially, the two differed primarily in economic outlook: whereas the JRM entertained close ties to the bazaar and advocated a mercantile economic order, the MRM envisioned land reform and a strong redistributive role for the state. Both are professional organizations and open only to members of the clergy. Most of the high-ranking ultraconservative officials, such as Supreme Leader Khamenei, the present and past heads of the judiciary, and the members of the Guardian Council, are members of the JRM.34

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 177

The MRM, by contrast, includes many individuals who joined the reformist project in one way or another, including President Khatami;35 Mehdi Karrubi, parliamentary speaker in 2000– 2004 and presidential contender in 2005 and 2009; Mohammad Musavi-Khoeiniha, chairman of the student organization DTV and prosecutor-general of Tehran in the 1980s; Mohammad Ali Abtahi, vice president for legal and parliamentary affairs under Khatami; Ayatollah Bujnourdi, a progressive voice regarding women’s rights; and Hadi Khamenei, brother of the Supreme Leader.36 Unlike the JRM, which dominates the councils appointed by the Supreme Leader, the MRM has been largely limited to electoral positions, notably in the parliament. Members of the leftist clerical organization had felt increasingly marginalized since the 1992 elections, when, following the 1989 constitutional amendment, the Guardian Council for the first time made wide use of its constitutional prerogative to “supervise” elections and extensively disqualified MRM candidates. When few publications reported on the large-scale disqualifications of leftist clerics, one of its senior members and a prominent leader of the student organization DTV, Musavi-Khoeiniha, established Salam, the longest-running reformist daily until it was closed in 2008.

Ensuing Power Struggles

Along with his domestic reforms aimed at strengthening civil society, Khatami’s presidency started with a number of foreign policy successes. In explicit challenge to Huntington’s clash of civilizations hypothesis, Khatami developed the concept “Dialogue among Civilizations,” which was conceived as a program of conferences and workshops of philosophical and diplomatic exchanges to take place over the following years in Iran. His program was so successful that the United Nations named 2000 the Year of the Dialogue among Civilizations. In late 1997 the meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference was held in Tehran, and Khatami’s allusions to popular sovereignty and republicanism were broadcast over Arab TV channels to the wider Middle East. These images of an emerging democracy in Iran raised renewed fears

178 | Mirjam Künkler

about Iranian influence in the region. As one Arab newspaper commented, “Iran this time is exporting free elections instead of Islamic Revolution.”37 In January 1998 Khatami famously gave an interview on the U.S. network CNN in which he indicated that Iran would accept a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine if that was the wish of the Palestinian people. To the astonishment of American TV viewers, Khatami stated: We have clearly said that we don’t intend to impose our views on others or to stand in their way. In our view all Palestinians have the right to express their views about their land, including the millions of Palestinians in Diaspora. They too have a right to self-determination. Only then can there be a lasting peace. We seek a peace through which Jews, Muslims and Christians, and indeed each and every Palestinian, could freely determine their own destiny. And we are prepared to contribute towards the realization of that peace.38 In March of the same year, the Iranian gas and oil industry was opened up to foreign investors for the first time in the republic’s history. Several months later, Iran gave the United Kingdom assurances that it had no intention, nor would it take any action, to threaten the life of Salman Rushdie or those associated with his work, nor would it encourage or assist others to do so. This became the first step in the normalization of relations between Iran and the UK and the eventual reinstatement of diplomatic ties. Domestically, however, Khatami ran into major obstacles. As soon as the media began to flourish and the public discourse became more politicized, a dramatic power struggle unfolded between the ultraconservatives who dominate the appointed councils on the one hand and Khatami, the reformist press, and, after 2000, the reformist-dominated parliament on the other. In June 1998, the then still conservative-dominated Majles impeached Khatami’s minister of the interior, Hojjatoleslam Abdollah Nouri, on alleged but probably fabricated corruption charges.39 Khatami responded by reappointing Nouri immediately to the newly created post of vice president of development and social affairs, which does not require parliamentary approval. One and a half years later, how-

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 179

ever, Nouri was convicted for allowing his newspaper, Khordad, to report on “dissident opinions” and was eventually incarcerated for nearly three years. In July 1998 Tehran’s Mayor Karbaschi, who had been instrumental in facilitating Khatami’s victory as his campaign manager, was found guilty on charges of corruption and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. From his house arrest, Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, designated Khomeini’s successor until he started to criticize the regime’s human rights track record, expressed his dismay over Khatami’s inability to protect his ministers against a judiciary that did not safeguard law and order but was instead used by the Supreme Leader to curb reformist power. Montazeri commented: This is actually one of my criticisms of President Khatami. When he was first elected, I sent him a message, saying, “If I were in your place, I would go to the Leader [Khamenei] and say: ‘Your position is protected; respect for you is guaranteed. But 22 million people voted for me; and when these 22 million people voted for me, all of them knew that the [Supreme] Leader of the country favored someone else [i.e., Nateq-Nouri, the conservative presidential candidate]. He himself, and everyone in his office, endorsed someone else. But did 22 million people come and vote for him? No. It meant that they did not agree with that organization. The vote of these 22 million people means, we do not agree with what you say. They have expectations of me, and if you want to interfere with my ministries, with my ministers and governors-general, and impose certain individuals on me, I cannot work. Hence, I will thank the people for their trust and resign.’”40 The year 1998 witnessed a series of mysterious murders of dissidents. Dariush Forouhar, who had served as minister of labor in Mehdi Bazargan’s provisional government in 1979– 80, and his wife were stabbed to death in their home.41 The writers Mohammad Jafar Pouyandeh and Mohammad Mokhtari, who had planned to found a writer’s association, disappeared, and their bodies were found several days later on the outskirts of Tehran.42

180 | Mirjam Künkler

In the newspaper Rah-e No (New Way), investigative journalist Akbar Ganji, helped expose two years later that the murders originated nowhere else than in the (pre-Khatami) administration. In fall 1998 Ganji published a series of articles implicitly accusing the Ministry of Intelligence of having masterminded the attacks on dissident intellectuals. Following Ganji’s articles, President Khatami ordered investigations into the ministry.43 Deputy Minister of Intelligence Said Emami was arrested and later committed suicide in prison (or so official reports suggested) before his trial could begin. Ganji’s investigations showed that the ministry had also been behind a failed collective assassination attempt in 1996 on a group of Iran’s most established writers and intellectuals who were en route to a conference in Armenia and whose bus was nearly steered down a cliff. Implicitly, Ganji hinted that the ministry could not have planned and carried out the assassinations if former President Hashemi Rafsanjani had not given his consent. Ganji was later summoned by the judiciary (like many of his colleagues) for participation in the April 2000 Berlin conference, “The Future of Reform in Iran,” and eventually sentenced to ten years in jail and an additional five years of internal exile. The prison term was later reduced to six years after Ganji went on a hunger strike.44 The July 1999 Protests

July 1999 presented the most violent onslaught on political activists yet and in many ways became a turning point for the reform movement. A new, more restrictive press law that placed the press under the jurisdiction of the Revolutionary Courts and the Special Courts of the Clergy was about to be passed in parliament in response to pressure from the judiciary.45 When, on the evening of the vote for the new law, Salam published a letter implicating none other than Deputy Minister of Intelligence Emami, charged with having masterminded the chain of 1996 murders, in the drafting of the law, the newspaper was closed down.46 Extensive but peaceful student demonstrations on the campus of the University of Tehran against the new press law and the closure of Salam were countered by a nocturnal raid on a dormitory complex by the vigilante group Ansar-e Hezbollah.47 The group brutally attacked students,

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 181

confiscated computers and books, and ransacked the interior. The raids left four students dead and several hundred wounded, some of them because the Ansar had thrown them from the dormitories’ windows.48 But governmental repression backfired and instigated further mobilization in the city and surroundings. Following a national outcry at the illicit attacks, the protests spilled over to other cities of the country. During the following two days, Rasht, Yazd, Mashhad, Isfahan, Khorramabad, Hamadan, Shahrud, and Tabriz experienced widespread demonstrations. In other cities, such as Bandar Abbas, Zanjan, Gorgan, Semnan, Yasouj, Maragheh, and Arak, student unions issued statements condemning the suppression of the Tehran protests.49 In Tabriz on July 11, police and vigilante groups moved onto campuses and into schools to brutally suppress student uprisings. At least five people were killed.50 The same day in Tehran, the Interior Ministry warned that “unlicensed demonstrations” would not be permitted.51 Khatami, who owed some of his 1997 electoral success to the youth, remained silent. Demonstrators then abandoned their original plan to march on the city center and instead rallied on campus.52 Ten thousand to 20,000 students were joined by “ordinary people [with] shopkeepers closing their stores, others providing demonstrators with food and cold water, motorists honking their horns and putting on their lights.”53 On surrounding streets, the Agence France-Presse reported, “students, residents and passersby” battled against police and “volunteer Islamic militiamen [basij].”54 Minister of Higher Education Mustafa Mo‘in (the leading reformist candidate in the 2005 presidential elections) and the chancellor of the University of Tehran both resigned over the confrontations.55 The following day, July 12, demonstrations moved to a prominent square in Tehran, Vali-ye Asr Square, where local residents joined students in demanding the release of those who had been arrested during the previous days. Amnesty International reported that some of the worst violence occurred on this day. Police rounded up photographers to block evidence of the violence, reporters were released only after their notes and films had been confiscated, club-wielding thugs beat up protesters, and tear gas was used to disperse the demonstrations.56 To undermine the ability of demonstrators to communicate with one another, the government shut down mobile telephone service in Tehran.57

182 | Mirjam Künkler

Both the parliament and the National Security Council ordered investigations into the July 9 attack of vigilante groups against the student dormitories; they found that the raid had taken place without authorization. The Tehran Revolutionary Court investigated ninetyeight members of the Ansar-e Hezbollah and eventually arrested twenty, eighteen of whom were released two years later. On July 19, just six days after the last large-scale demonstration in the capital, Manucher Mohammadi, a high-profile student activist and leading member of the National Association of Students and Graduates (Anjoman-e Daneshjuyan va Daneshamukhtegan-e Melli), was shown on national television “confessing” to his involvement with “counterrevolutionary agents.”58 Following the broadcast, statements by the Ministry of Intelligence suggested that Mohammadi was the primary agent provocateur responsible for the unrest and that he had been supported by “foreign networks” to incite violence and instability. Mohammadi was later sentenced to death.59 The Revolutionary Court also tried two hundred other students and eventually sentenced three more to death for having violated public order. The sentences were ultimately commuted to prison terms, but many of the two hundred originally arrested remained in prison well into the mid-2000s.60 Crucially, President Khatami did not speak out against the criminal behavior of the Ansar-e Hezbollah until three days after the event, and then, instead of acknowledging the students’ courage, he reprimanded them for their actions: “[The protests] were against the interest of the nation, and against the policies of the government. This event is just the opposite of the political development advocated by the government.”61 On national television, he called on students “to respect law and order” as further chaos would work against the reform agenda.62 Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei referred to the dormitory attack as “a bitter and unacceptable incident,” but he also issued a statement asserting that “officials in the government, especially those in charge of public security, have been emphatically instructed to put down the corrupt and warring elements. . . . My Basiji children in particular should maintain their full alertness and through their presence in every needed scene terrify and crush down the wicked enemies.”63 In reaction to the calls for calm by Supreme Leader Khamenei and

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 183

President Khatami, students in Ardabil canceled a previously planned protest.64 Meanwhile, in Tehran, students were chanting “Khatami, where are you? Your students have been killed.” In a letter to the newspaper Neshat, a student wrote, “They were looking for someone, they were looking for any traces of him. Yes, they were looking for Khatami, not that he would do anything about it, but simply that he would come and listen and see them cry.”65 Khatami addressed the situation again in an interview broadcast on July 13. He promised to investigate the causes behind the student unrest and announced, “We will try not to confront the violence with violence but with special and legal means.” The president noted that the “issues raised, the slogans chanted . . . are all meant to induce division and engender violence in society.”66 The students suspended their protests temporarily on July 15 to provide time for negotiations with “the government.” Their demands included the dismissal of the national chief of police, Hedayat Lotfian; the transfer of control of the police to the (reformist) Interior Ministry; the dismissal of Ansar-e Hezbollah members from security forces and the military; the public trial of those responsible for the dormitory attack; the return of the bodies of the students killed in the dormitory attack to their families; and a lifting of the ban on Salam. None of these demands were met.67 Conspicuously absent from the July student protests was a figure who could have negotiated between the regime and the demonstrators. Khatami was a politician, not a civil society activist. He was the softliner among the incumbents, in need of an interlocutor from the moderate opposition. However, none of the journalists and editors, on behalf of whom the students demonstrated, intervened as a spokesperson or arbiter between the government and the demonstrators. None of the civil society activists from the new association for the protection of journalists, the Bar Association, or the newly registered political parties took on a leading role during the week of unrest. No one performed the crucial functions of, on the one hand, sustaining public pressure against the government and, on the other, preventing an escalation of the situation. All the reformist press did was that two newspapers announced

184 | Mirjam Künkler

their intention to suspend publication on July 13 in support of Salam.68 A statement signed by 583 journalists expressed its outrage over the new press law.69 Retrospective analyses of the July 1999 events raise important questions about the politics of repression and dissent in the Islamic Republic at the time. Twenty-four high commanders from the IRGC wrote a letter to President Khatami on July 12 (published a week later)70 in which they criticized the government’s mild handling of the protesters and warned “the Guards’ patience has its limits.”71 An article in the London Sunday Times on July 18 suggested there were indications of an attempted coup against Khatami and his government. While the confrontations between students and the Ansar-e Hezbollah at the dormitories on July 8 probably resulted from spontaneous actions, what followed over the rest of the week “had all the hallmarks of a well-orchestrated covert action, using mobs to discredit and reverse a popular movement,”72 so that Khatami would be obliged to distance himself from the protesters. Similar suppositions were voiced in Neshat on July 15, 1999. Whether or not hard-liners in the Ministry of Intelligence had intended to use the popular uprising in order to discredit the reform movement and force either the resignation of Khatami or his estrangement from the student movement, the week of July 8–15, 1999, had precisely this effect. Two months later, August 27– 29, 1999, during a visit to Hamadan Province, Khatami commented on the protests in retrospect. He criticized the July 8 attack on the dormitories as “a crime” but said that what happened after July 8 “was an effort to go beyond the boundaries. It was to express vengeance towards the system, . . . an act against national security with deviant slogans[,] . . . a scenario to distort fundamental slogans[,] . . . a declaration of war against the president.”73 The 2000 Parliamentary Elections and the Final Crackdown on the Press

In the preparation for the 2000 parliamentary elections, the most serious measures against the press occurred. In a speech on April 20, 2000, Supreme Leader Khamenei ordered a mass attack on the press: “There are

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 185

ten to fifteen papers writing as if they are directed from one center undermining Islamic and revolutionary principles, insulting constitutional bodies and creating tension and discord in society. . . . Unfortunately, the same enemy who wants to overthrow the [regime] has found a base in the country. . . . Some of the press have become the base of the enemy.”74 Within ten days of the speech, twenty-five of the country’s leading newspapers and magazines were closed, including Asr-e Azadegan, Fat’h, Aftab-e Emruz, Arya, Gozaresh-e Ruz, Bamdad-e No, Payam-e Azadi, Azad, Payam-e Hajar, Aban, Arzesh, Iran-e Farda, Sobh-e Emruz, Akhbar Eqtesad, Jebheh, Awa Gozaresh-e Rouz, Ham’mihan, Khordad, and Bayan. Also among the banned newspapers was Mosharekat, published by the IIFP (the reformists’ strongest faction), as well as the monthly intellectual magazine Kian, originally founded by the religious intellectuals Abdolkarim Soroush, Mohsen Kadivar, and Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari. The closures were particularly painful in that reformists now had limited means to disseminate their programs and list of candidates to the larger public, as well as to highlight the achievements of the Khatami presidency, despite the domestic setbacks. As if the discrediting of the student movement and the closure of the most important reformist newspapers was not enough, the regime engaged in two more clampdowns before the 2000 parliamentary elections. A few weeks after the onslaught on the press, some seventeen leading Iranian reformist intellectuals and politicians who attended a conference in Germany on the future of reform in Iran (the 2000 Berlin Conference) were arrested. These included the investigative journalist Akbar Ganji and the dissident cleric Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari. On January 13, 2001, the Revolutionary Court convicted seven of the participants on vague charges concerning “national security,” “propaganda against the state,” and “insulting Islam” and sentenced them to two to fifteen years in prison (fifteen years for Ganji). Yousefi Eshkevari, who was tried in the Special Court for the Clergy (SCC), was sentenced to death.75 A few weeks later, the core members of the Center for Strategic Studies, the think tank affiliated with the presidential office, were under attack. Mashallah Shamsolvaezin was jailed for having criticized the Iranian policy of capital punishment, and Said Hajjarian barely survived

186 | Mirjam Künkler

an assassination attempt, when he was shot in the face. He has been paralyzed ever since. In addition to closing the large majority of reformist newspapers and incarcerating some of the key intellectuals of the reform movement, the conservative parliament passed a last-minute bill that raised the voting age from sixteen to eighteen, evidently in order to cut out the fraction of the vote most likely to be cast for the reformist candidates. Despite these major setbacks, Khatami’s supporters once again surprised the regime: reformist factions won a robust two-thirds majority with 215 of 290 seats at the 2000 parliamentary elections, and turnout reached another high with 69 percent.

Closing in on the Last Zones of Autonomy The Judiciary and Authoritarian Consolidation

While the reformists had now expanded their presence from the presidency via the municipal councils into the national legislature, the conservatives increasingly used the judiciary to repress dissent. On March 18, 2001, the Tehran Revolutionary Court ordered the closure of the religious-nationalist Iran Freedom Movement of Mehdi Bazargan (the first prime minister after the revolution) on charges of attempting to overthrow the Islamic Republic. While the Political Parties Law provided that any court might take action against a political party only after receiving an official complaint from the Article 10 Commission in the Ministry of Interior that also issues licenses, the Revolutionary Court closed down the party nevertheless and in violation of the law. The Court also used the opportunity to order the arrest and detention of twenty-one of its leading members (mostly legal scholars, engineers, and physicians), as well as independent political activists around the country on suspicion of being associated with the Freedom Movement. The parliament objected. In an open letter, the MPs protested the illicit closure, objected to the fact that the accused members of the Freedom Movement had been denied access to lawyers, and that some had been held in (what was supposed to be “temporary”) solitary confinement for more than five months.76

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 187

Once again, despite these major confrontations between hardliners and reformists, Khatami emerged victorious from the 2001 presidential election and reached a mandate for change 8 percentage points higher than that of 1997: 78 percent. In a national survey held during the electoral campaign, 90.5 percent of Iranians supported either reform or fundamental change of the political process.77 During the same summer, the six nonclerical jurists of the Guardian Council were to be appointed by suggestion of the judiciary and confirmation by the parliament. The MPs opposed the list of suggested names submitted by the head of the judiciary and in particular the planned appointment of at least two ultraconservative candidates. Conservatives, meanwhile, were anxious not to lose control of the Guardian Council as this might have enabled Khatami and the reformist parliament to pass extensive political and social reform packages. The standoff between the legislature and the judiciary forced a delay in swearing Khatami in for a second term as president. Finally, in August 2001, the Supreme Leader called on the Expediency Council to resolve the standoff between the parliament and the judiciary. Instead of reviewing the judiciary’s and the parliament’s arguments and attempting arbitration, the Expediency Council under the leadership of former President Rafsanjani unilaterally rewrote the laws concerning the appointment of members of the Guardian Council such that parliamentary confirmation required only relative and no longer absolute majorities. It also rewrote a law to the effect that for the president’s inauguration only two-thirds (rather than all) of the Guardian Council members had to be present.78 Despite these setbacks, the reformist factions in parliament remained committed to reforming the justice system. A 1994 justice reform had combined the civil and criminal courts in so-called general courts, and, with devastating consequences for habeas corpus, had merged the functions of the investigator, the prosecutor, and the judge in the judge—similar to the qadi in traditional Shari‘a courts.79 The 2001 parliament passed a law that would reestablish the prosecution and strengthen the rights of the accused.80 Predictably, the Guardian Council blocked it.81 Hopes to improve the rule of law were further dashed when the third economic and social five-year plan contained an article (187) that instituted a new regulation permitting the judiciary to arbitrarily confer

188 | Mirjam Künkler

the title of “lawyer” and “jurist” to applicants who were not admitted to the bar. For decades, one of the main responsibilities of the Bar Association had been to select and certify lawyers through a competitive examination. It could penalize and take disciplinary actions against lawyers who violated the ethical code of the profession. With the new regulation, the neutrality of the legal profession was further eroded. Lawyers now had to fear collusion with judges and jurists directly certified by the judiciary. Political Law

The Iranian situation exhibits graphically the dominance of what the legal theorist Ugo Mattei calls “political law” over “professional law.”82 In a rule of law state, law is professionalized and apolitical, in that the legal and political arenas are differentiated and political decisionmaking itself is subjected to law. “Political law,” by contrast, is a product of political administrations and not protected from the interference of political incumbents. Mattei’s description of political law powerfully resonates with the situation in the Islamic Republic generally but under the two Khatami presidencies in particular. One witnessed repeatedly how the ultraconservatives arbitrarily used law and the judiciary to their advantage, how they might even expand the power of the unelected positions in the polity by transforming reformist bills from the parliament into bills that would further consolidate authoritarian rule, and how intervention by the Supreme Leader in judicial matters in defiance of the Constitution became a well-established practice. When Hashem Aghajari, a professor of history at Tarbiat Modarres University, gave a speech in June 2002 commemorating the death of Ali Shariati, he used the occasion to remind his young audience of Shariati’s motivation for rejecting quietism and emphasizing political responsibility as a religious duty. What Iran needed now was a reformation that reversed the authoritarian trend of absolute clerical hegemony, Aghajari suggested. Islam could not be practiced freely in an environment that did not respect human rights. A few weeks later, Aghajari was convicted for apostasy and sentenced to death. The sentence set off protests across the country until the Supreme Court repealed it in February 2003 and sent the case back for retrial to the very court that

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 189

had ordered the execution. The court reinstated the original sentence, upon which Aghajari was expected to appeal to the Supreme Leader for pardon. Aghajari, however, refused to appeal the ruling, announcing, “Those who have issued this verdict have to implement it if they think it is right or else the judiciary has to handle it.”83 Once again, protests erupted until the Supreme Court (illegally, because according to the law it does not enjoy that prerogative) commuted the verdict to a prison term of three years in jail, two years of probation, and five years’ suspension of his social rights. Five years into the reform era, 108 major dailies and periodicals had been banned. When the sixth parliament tried to protect the press by drafting a new press law, the Supreme Leader intervened and ended all discussions about such a bill. In an unprecedented step, he did not wait for the bill to be vetoed by the Guardian Council but instead personally intervened in the legislative process in clear violation of the Constitution and in defiance of Khatami’s agenda to strengthen the rule of law. Khatami and the reformists attempted one final push toward political and legal reform when they introduced two bills into the parliament that would have limited the Guardian Council’s power of “approbatory supervision” of elections and would have enabled the president to warn and prosecute officials in the three branches of power who overstepped their competencies. After nearly two years of back-and-forth between the parliament and the Guardian Council, during which the Council not only rejected the “twin bills” but also tried to rewrite them in a way that would have strengthened the power of the unelected institutions even further, President Khatami announced that he was going to withdraw the bills in March 2003. The incoming parliament, he feared, might otherwise use the legislation to reduce presidential powers further. All in all, the Guardian Council vetoed 111 of 295 legislative proposals between 2000 and 2004. A Movement Breaks Apart

Reflecting on the years 1997– 2005, Bayat notes, “The initial strategy of mobilizing from below and negotiating from above seemed to have failed. The reform movement was instead the target of onslaught from above and disenchantment from below.”84

190 | Mirjam Künkler

Seven years after Khatami’s sensational victory, Iran News proclaimed the death of the reform movement.85 The two major proposals Khatami’s alliance had produced in parliament in order to restrict the extensive powers of the Guardian Council and to strengthen those political institutions accountable to the people had repeatedly been rejected by the Guardian Council. Khatami’s early initiatives to boost civil society had worn off too. In 2004 there were more journalists imprisoned in Iran than in any other state in the world. Political parties had not, as envisioned, become the vehicles for mass mobilization around salient issues; and the student movements, the population that was most “mobilizable,” had been alienated from the reformist project after July 1999 when they felt protection by reformist politicians was lacking. In a move to curtail prospects that the reformists had a future, the Guardian Council six weeks before the 2004 parliamentary elections disqualified 30 percent of all candidates, among them eighty-seven sitting parliamentarians. Reacting to the collective resignation of 122 MPs on February 1, 2004, the candidacy of three parliamentarians was reinstated, but no other action followed. Of the original twenty-two groups of the Khordad Front, the umbrella coalition of reformist factions that enjoyed a two-thirds majority in parliament, only eight ultimately competed.86 The largest reform party, the IIFP, along with fifteen other original members of the Khordad Front, boycotted the elections and withdrew its candidates. The clerical association MRM, meanwhile, did decide to participate, in a clear illustration of waning solidarity and cohesion among the reformist factions. Days before the election, President Khatami, along with the minister of the interior and the twenty-seven reformist provincial governors, threatened to step down should the list of disqualified candidates not be revised. However, like numerous occasions before, the president did not live up to this threat, despite the hard-liners’ failure to cooperate.87 Quite to the contrary, he backed Supreme Leader Khamenei’s edict that “voting was an Islamic duty” days before the election, despite the fact that his own brother, leader of the IIPF and disqualified candidate himself, had successfully mobilized the majority of reformist factions for a boycott.88 After seven years of political opportunities in the executive and four years in parliament, the reformist project was thus “checkmate,” as

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 191

the conservative daily Keyhan sarcastically noted following the February 2004 elections.89 With these elections, reformists had lost their dominion in parliament, and when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected to the presidency in 2005, the reform movement, for the moment, seemed to have come to a tragic end.

Conclusion

Alfred Stepan has outlined as the five core tasks of democratic opposition resisting integration into the regime, disputing its legitimacy, raising the costs of authoritarian rule, creating a credible democratic alternative, and guarding zones of autonomy. The reformists, both in political and civil society, had successfully resisted integration into the regime (not the most difficult task to achieve in the Iranian context, where worldviews and ideologies of ultraconservatives and reformists run diametrically opposed to each other). By achieving the exponential growth in print media and by raising the quality of reporting, the reformists had also successfully disputed the regime’s legitimacy. When reformists were voted out of parliament in 2004 and the presidency in 2005, it was not because voters had renewed confidence in the regime’s legitimacy but because reformists had proven unable to deliver on their promises of political, social, and economic reform. The vote for Ahmadinejad in 2005 was, like the vote for Khatami in 1997, predominantly a protest vote. Initially, the reformists had also been quite successful in raising the costs of authoritarian rule, notably by attempting in a number of ways to hold politicians accountable and strengthen the rule of law and prosecute transgressions and by mobilizing protesters against media closures. As is also documented, the reformists were quite successful in creating a credible democratic alternative.90 President Khatami himself was a leading voice in this discourse who in his writings laid out the reasons why political power needed checks and balances and why, if unchecked, it had a corrupting effect to which even religious authorities were not immune. He was supported in this by the writings of Abdolkarim Soroush, Mohsen Kadivar, Hasan Yousefi Eshkevari, and Mohammad Mojtahed Shabestari—all religious intellectuals and clerics once

192 | Mirjam Künkler

supportive of the Islamic Revolution whose politico-religious thought made a 180-degree turn in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it became clear that the nature of power in the Islamic Republic hardly differed from that under the previous regime. The democratic theory these intellectuals developed was a major impetus for the mobilization of the Iranian public in support of the reformist project and soon reached audiences beyond Iran. Yet the task that the reformist project did not achieve was guarding zones of autonomy. By contrast, a history of the eight years of attempted political reform in Iran reads like a chronology of systematic exclusion and elimination of regime critics and the gradual but inexorable process of authoritarian consolidation. While President Khatami initiated a number of reforms to construct and consolidate zones of autonomy vis-à-vis the regime—by liberalizing the press, by establishing municipal elections for the first time in the republic’s history, by promoting the professionalization of political parties, and by attempting to reform parts of the legal and justice system—the Supreme Leader’s office and its representatives reacted quickly (and often preemptively) to draw such emerging zones of autonomy back into their realm of control. Authoritarian consolidation started with the mysterious murder of several independent intellectuals and writers in 1996 and 1997, and these events were soon followed by many others: the violent crackdown on a weeklong uprising by the student movement in the capital and other cities in 1999; the merciless mass closures of critical newspapers and magazines in 1999 and 2000; the closure of the Iran Freedom Movement in 2002 and persecution of its members; the marginalization of the Bar Association with the certification of lawyers through the judiciary in the same year; the Guardian Council’s rejection of a third of all legislative proposals passed by the reformist parliament between 2000 and 2004, including the twin bills that would have expanded the purview of the elected institutions; the final blow to reformist parliamentary factions with the widespread disqualifications prior to the 2004 elections; and, throughout this process, the systematic violations of law and human rights. Not only were reformists not able to deliver on their promise of political, social, and economic reform, but they also were not able to halt the very significant erosion of the rule of law

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 193

during that time period. If anything, challenging the Supreme Leader through legal channels was harder in 2005 than it had been in 1997. By attempting to use all potential openings and opportunities the 1979 Constitution offered for “reform from within,” the reformists had brought these very opportunities to light. Ultraconservatives soon understood the urgency of closing these windows of opportunity, and along the way mastered the game of putting the law and the judiciary into their service.

Notes I thank Said Amir Arjomand for providing helpful comments on this chapter. In the interest of easier readability, no diacritics are used in Persian transliterations. 1. Polity classifies countries on a scale of –10 to +10 annually. Countries with a score of +7 and above are generally considered democratic. Before 1997 and after 2003 Iran was scored at –6. 2. This is true for Brazil after 1963 and Chile after 1973. Iran between 1997 and 2003 was also considered freer than ever in its past, including the first democratic interlude between 1941 and 1953. The degree of freedom in that period is in itself noteworthy. Iran was freer and more competitive between 1941 and 1953 than East Germany ever was (until 1989), than Spain ever was under Franco, than Portugal was under Salazar, or than Italy ever was before 1948. 3. Alfred Stepan, “On the Tasks of Democratic Opposition,” Journal of Democracy 1, no. 2 (Spring 1990): 41– 49. The other four core tasks are resisting integration into the regime, disputing its legitimacy, raising the costs of authoritarian rule, and creating a credible democratic alternative. I have written elsewhere on the Iranian opposition’s project to create a credible democratic alternative. See Mirjam Künkler, “Democratization, Islamic Thought and Social Movements: Coalitional Success and Failure in Indonesia and Iran” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2008), chap. 6. 4. Characteristically, Khatami’s campaign slogans were “Pluralism and democracy—observance of the rule of law—implementation of the Constitution.” In light of the importance of the creation of order and the rule of law in moving the country toward political liberalization, “implementation of the Constitution” became a key aspect of the Khatami presidency. On the need for oppositional actors to create impartial and effective state institutions and strengthen the rule of law as a means to achieve political liberalization, see Eva Bellin, “The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism

194 | Mirjam Künkler

in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Politics 36, no. 2 (2004): 139– 57. “To a large degree, order comes prior to democracy” (152). Khatami and the reformist factions had recognized this and directed their greatest efforts toward ensuring decision and policy making in accordance with the mandates prescribed in the Constitution and books of law. 5. Daniel Byman, Shahram Chubin, Anoushiravan Ehteshami, and Jerrold Green, eds., Iran’s Security Policy in the Post-Revolutionary Era (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001), 49. 6. Several organizations are responsible for internal and external security: the intelligence services, the IRGC (Revolutionary Guards), and the regular army (Artesh). While the IRGC are more focused on the defense of the revo lution vis-à-vis “internal enemies,” the Artesh is entrusted with the country’s defense against external threats. Under article 110 of the 1979 Constitution, the Supreme Leader retains the right to declare “general troop mobilization,” and he is the supreme commander of both the IRGC and the Artesh. Although Khamenei does not often play a role in the day-to-day concerns, he guides the general direction of security policy through his representatives in the security institutions, especially the National Security Council, and the military Islamic commissars of which an estimated two thousand work under the Supreme Leader’s direction. 7. Byman et al., Iran’s Security Policy in the Post-Revolutionary Era, 49. See also Wilfried Buchta, Who Rules Iran? The Structure of Power in the Islamic Republic (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2000), 125, whose source is an interview with Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Abtahi in the Arab weekly magazine Al-Sharq al-Wasat, October 5, 1998, 8. Abtahi became Khatami’s chief of staff in 1997 and in 2001 was promoted to vice president for legal and parliamentary affairs, from which he resigned in 2004 to protest the massive disqualifications prior to the parliamentary elections. 8. Buchta, Who Rules Iran?, 35. 9. Ibid. Sachedina notes that it was almost two weeks before the Friday Prayer leader of Qom, Ayatollah Javadi-Amoli, expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the elections in the Friday sermon and congratulated Khatami publicly. Abdulaziz Sachedina, “The Rule of the Religious Jurist in Iran,” in Iran at the Crossroads, ed. John L. Esposito and R. K. Ramazani (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 127– 31, 124. 10. Throughout the chapter, what is meant by “regime” is the Office of the Supreme Leader, the councils he appoints, and the institutions he controls. Even though Khatami gained the presidency, and reformist factions were in the majority in parliament in 2000– 2004, reformists were—despite all efforts, as this chapter tries to show—not in charge and could ultimately not determine the state’s domestic and foreign policy. 11. The parliamentary speaker also sits ex officio on the Expediency Council, which directly advises the Supreme Leader and “resolves” disputes

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 195

between the parliament and the Guardian Council. If the Guardian Council has vetoed a bill passed by parliament, the parliament may decide with a twothirds majority to forward the bill to the Expediency Council, which may then decide to pass it as law in the original version of the parliament, or with the changes demanded by the Guardian Council, or in an entirely different version drafted by itself. 12. The coalition called Second Khordad Front, signifying the date of the Persian calendar when Khatami had been elected president, consisted of twentytwo factions, among which the Assembly of Combatant Clerics (of which Kha tami is a member), the Participation Front of Islamic Iran (headed by Khatami’s brother), the Solidarity Party of Islamic Iran, and the Executives of Construction Party under Rafsanjani were the most prominent. In Tehran, the latter broke away from the coalition shortly before the 2000 election. 13. The range is due to the fact that many independent candidates cannot be unequivocally classified. 14. See the election results on the Iran Data Portal constructed by my colleague Mehrzad Boroujerdi and me, www.princeton.edu/irandataportal/ elections/parl/2000. 15. Though it did not remain competitive for long, Iran certainly qualified between 1997 and 2001 as what Levitsky and Way designate a “competitive authoritarian regime” in which some degree of contestation in key arenas of the overall authoritarian polity exists. These four arenas of contestation are the legislature, elections, the media, and the courts. See Steve Levitsky and Lucan Way, “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2 (2002): 51– 65. In Iran, reformers and conservatives competed in three of these four areas: in the realm of the press in 1999 and 2000 (see below), in the realm of the legislature from 2000 to 2004, and in elections in 1997, 1999, 2000, and 2001. Only in the realm of the courts did the reformists have no influence whatsoever, and it was this bastion of power of the ultraconservatives that brought the reformists to their knees. 16. See Robert Dahl, On Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), chap. 4. 17. While four religions are tolerated as minority religions (Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Armenian Christianity, and Assyrian Christianity) and may each vote for one parliamentary representative (Armenian Christians for two), conversion from Islam is punishable as “apostasy” by death. It is not possible to register no religious affiliation. 18. According to Article 96 of the Constitution, “The determination of compatibility of the legislation passed by the Islamic Consultative Assembly [parliament] with the laws of Islam rests with the majority vote of the fuqaha¯’ [Islamic jurists] on the Guardian Council; and the determination of its compatibility with the Constitution rests with the majority of all the members of the Guardian Council.” According to Article 98, “The authority of the interpretation

196 | Mirjam Künkler

of the Constitution is vested with the Guardian Council, which is to be done with the consent of three-fourths of its members.” A bill is passed into law after it is passed by the parliament, approved by the Guardian Council, and signed by the president. In case of a Guardian Council veto, the parliament has the option of shelving the bill, agreeing to the Guardian Council’s demanded changes, or voting with a two-thirds majority to forward it to the Expediency Council. For the latter case, see note 11. 19. On the Expediency Council, see note 11. 20. Mohammad Khatami, Islam, Dialogue, and Civil Society (Canberra: Australia National University Press, 2000), 43. 21. Ibid., 5. 22. See Hamid Reza Jalaeipour, “Religious Intellectuals and Political Action in the Reform Movement,” in Intellectual Trends in 20th-Century Iran, ed. Negin Nabavi (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2003), 136– 46, esp. 138. 23. More precisely, Mohajerani’s deputy in charge of press affairs, Ahmad Burqani, should be credited with having initiated the press upsurge. 24. See Asef Bayat, Making Islam Democratic (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 110. 25. See Jalaiepour, “Religious Intellectuals and Political Action in the Reform Movement.” Bayat claims circulation rose to 3 million by 1999 and estimates that each newspaper was read by four individuals on average, which would raise newspaper readership to 12 million a day. See Bayat, Making Islam Democratic. 26. See Bill Samii, “Sisyphus’ Newsstand: The Iranian Press under Khatami,” MERIA Journal 5, no. 3 (September 2001): 1–14. Jame‘eh was closed down after it had leaked a quote by IRGC General Rahim Safavi to the effect that the Revolutionary Guards were ready to “cut the throats and tongues” of the emerging free press. 27. Despite the protection one might assume Faezeh Rafsanjani enjoyed within the regime, even Zan was closed down in 1999. 28. The permit is issued not by the minister alone. It involves a commission within the ministry on which two representatives of the judiciary sit, as well as two members of parliament and a representative of the ministry. The commission may also order the dissolution of parties. 29. Resalat, August 4, 1997, quoted in Stephen Fairbanks, “Theocracy versus Democracy: Iran Considers Political Parties,” Middle East Journal 52, no. 1 (Winter 1998): 17– 31, esp. 29. 30. Ibid., 28. 31. Until 1999 elections had been held only for the parliament (every four years), the presidency (every four years), and the Assembly of Experts (every eight years). Article 100 of the Constitution reads, “In order to expedite social, economic, development, public health, cultural, and educational programmes

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 197

and facilitate other affairs relating to public welfare with the cooperation of the people according to local needs, the administration of each village, division, city, municipality, and province will be supervised by a council to be named the Village, Division, City, Municipality, or Provincial Council. Members of each of these councils will be elected by the people of the locality in question.” 32. Numbers cited by Mustafa Mo‘in, Minister of Higher Education, in No Rouz, 11 Tir 1380 (2001). 33. See Bayat, Making Islam Democratic, 109. 34. The ultraconservative JRM is closely connected to the Society of Instructors of the Qom Seminaries (Jame‘eh-ye Modarresin-e Hawzeh-ye Elmiyyeh Qom), which plays a key role in installing Friday Prayer leaders in the country and keeping a registry of clerical personalities (and thereby certifying who counts as an ayatollah versus a (lower-ranking) hojjatoleslam, etc.). Two other influential associations close to the JRM are the traditionalist merchants of the bazaar organized in the Islamic Coalition (Mo’talefeh-ye Islami) and the Society of Muslim Engineers (Jame‘eh-ye Islami Mohandessin), of which President Ahmadinejad is a member. The network of these four organizations is closely linked with the broadcast media and the parastatal endowments (bonyads), which are thought to control as much as one-fourth of the country’s GDP, are tax exempt and not subject to financial audits. 35. Notably, many of Khatami’s clerical supporters and close confidants were MRM members, and the MRM played a major role in mobilizing voters during Khatami’s election in 1997. 36. Karrubi, however, left the MRM after the association failed to endorse him as its presidential candidate in 2005. 37. Cited in Bayat, Making Islam Democratic, 111. 38. Transcript of interview with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, January 7, 1998; www.cnn.com/WORLD/9801/07/iran/interview.html (retrieved March 15, 2004). 39. Notably, Nouri was accused of, inter alia, giving publicity to Ayatollah Montazeri. Nouri was sentenced to five years in prison in November 1999 but released early in 2002, following the death of his brother. For his defense speech, see Abdollah Nouri, Shawkaran-e eslah: defaiyat-e Abdollah Nouri dar dadgah-e vizheh-ye ruhaniyat (Tehran, 2000). Nouri’s deputy in charge of press affairs, Ahmad Burqani, resigned after the first set of closures in early 1999 and was replaced by Shaaban Shahidi, former head of external services of the staterun radio, another close aide to Khatami. In January 2000, it was reported that the National Control and Inspection Organization had charged Burqani with allocating foreign currency to the press on a preferential basis. See Tehran Times, January 9, 2000. The October 13, 1999, issues of the reformist dailies Aftab-e Emruz and Manateq-e Azad, however, printed reports from the ministry to the

198 | Mirjam Künkler

effect that hard-line publications received 23.57 percent of foreign exchange distributed among the press, while reformist newspapers received only 5.67 percent of the subsidies. The articles note that the hard-line newspapers Kayhan and Resalat alone received three times more money from the ministry than Sobh-e Emruz, Khordad, Salam, Neshat, and other reformist dailies together. The editor of one of the reformist dailies pointed these articles out to me during an interview on September 18, 2003. 40. Cited in Ziba Mir-Hosseini and Richard Tapper, Islam and Democracy in Iran: Eshkevari and the Quest for Reform (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 106. I have corrected the translation. 41. Navid Kermani, Die Revolution der Kinder (München: C. H. Beck, 2001). 42. “The murder network is located abroad,” a judicial spokesman was quoted as saying at that time. “As Slain Secular Writer Is Buried, Iran Blames a Foreign Network,” New York Times, December 16, 1998. 43. In her autobiography Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi recounts how, being the lawyer of one of the victims’ family, she studied the case files only to find out that she, too, was on the very list of “undesirable subjects” sought to be eradicated. See Shirin Ebadi, Iran Awakening: From Prison to Peace Prize: One Woman’s Struggle at the Crossroads of History (New York: Knopf, 2006). 44. The International Commission of Jurists records several violations in the proceedings of the cases against the “serial killers”: “Only five defendants, who were accused of being the main perpetrators of the killings, were in custody, whereas other suspected accomplices remained free on bail. The lawyers of the victims’ families were denied access to the case files. The identity of the defendants and the specific charges against them are still not known. Furthermore, any criticism of the actions of the judiciary and the conditions of the trial received harsh punishments from the judiciary. Several citizens, including journalists and lawyers of the victims’ families were arrested and prosecuted merely for criticizing the actions of the judiciary in connection with the case.” See International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Attacks on Justice 2002—Iran, 11th ed. (2002), 200, available at www.icj.org//news.php3?id_ article=2685&lang=en. 45. The Court of the Clergy is not under the purview of the judiciary but under the aegis of the Supreme Leader, who may refer any case to the court at his own discretion. See Mirjam Künkler, “The Special Court of the Clergy (Dadgah-e Vizheh-ye Ruhaniyat) and the Repression of Dissident Clergy in Iran,” in Constitutionalism, the Rule of Law, and the Politics of Administration in Egypt and Iran, ed. Said Arjomand and Nathan Brown (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012). Under the new law, journalists and publishers have to reveal all their sources and the responsibility for the published material is no longer limited to the editor but extended to photographers,

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 199

journalists, and publishers. The law was passed on July 7, 1999, with 125 votes in the 270-member house (55 members of the parliament being absent at that time). See Ramin Karimian and Shabanali Bahrampour, “Iranian Press Update,” Middle East Report, no. 212 (Autumn 1999): 38– 39. 46. The managing director of Salam and chairman of DTV, Mohammad Musavi-Khoeiniha, was tried by the Special Court for the Clergy on July 25, 1999, for “spreading fabrications,” “disturbing public opinion,” and “publishing classified documents.” See Künkler, “The Special Court of the Clergy.” 47. The Ansar-e Hezbollah is one of several paramilitary militias. Like most of the paramilitaries, such as Ansar-e Velayat, Ashura and Zahra battalions, it was created in the 1990s to “protect clerical authorities” and to handle problems of popular unrest. Each of these militias typically consists of about 10,000 to 12,000 members. See The Military Balance (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2008). 48. Human Rights Watch (HRW), World Report 2000, suggests that at least four students were killed, 300 wounded, and 400 arrested. 49. RFL/RL Iran Report, July 19, 1999, vol. 2, no. 29. 50. Amnesty International Index: MDE 13/16/99, “Further information on UA 160/99 (MDE 13/15/99, 9 July 1999)—Fear for Safety.” See also RFL/RL Iran Report, July 19, 1999, vol. 2, no. 29, which provides interesting background on the reporting of the event on national television: “After 9 minutes of video and commentary about the damage and the funeral of a casualty in Tabriz, there was a 3-minute piece about U.S., Israeli, and Mujahedin Khalq support for the demonstrations. Then 10 minutes of Khatami saying the demonstrations harmed the system and some people were taking advantage of the situation, was followed by 9 minutes of commentary condemning the BBC and State Department spokesman James Rubin for their statements about the demonstration.” 51. Since the police and vigilante groups were responsible for the attacks on the dormitories, it seemed that the Ministry of Interior was not in control. It is likely that the ministry, although reformist, issued this statement to establish some authority in the situation. 52. Douglas Jehl, “Despite Police Dismissals, Iran Protest Is the Angriest Yet,” New York Times, July 12, 1999. 53. Iran Press Service, July 11, 2000. 54. AFP, July 13, 1999. 55. Khatami refused to accept Mo‘in’s resignation, however. 56. Amnesty International, July 13, 1999; and RFL/RL Iran Report, July 19, 1999, vol. 2, no. 29. 57. Ibid. 58. Amnesty International, “Iran: Further Information on Fear for Safety: Student Demonstrators,” AI index: MDE 13/14/99.

200 | Mirjam Künkler

59. Ibid. This was later commuted to thirteen years of imprisonment. 60. The International Commission of Jurists notes, “According to a declaration by the head of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, Hojjatoleslam Gholamhossein Rahbarpour, in September 1999, 1,500 students were arrested during the riots, 500 were released after questioning, 800 were released subsequently and formal investigations were undertaken against 200. . . . In October 2000, Amir Farshad Ibrahimi, a former member of a vigilante group, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for defamation after he stated in a videotape that Ansare Hezbollah vigilantes had received payments from senior clerics and conservative politicians to carry out attacks on reformist personalities and to disrupt public events and demonstrations.” See ICJ, Attacks on Justice, 18. It is not inconceivable that the Ansar-e Hezbollah might have received funding from clerics or other elements in the regime to fight the demonstrations. See note 47 above. 61. BBC, “Six Days That Shook Iran,” Tuesday, July 11, 2000, http:// news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/middle_east/828696.stm. 62. “Protesting in Tehran,” The Economist, July 15, 1999. 63. Tehran Times, July 15, 1999. Khamenei also warned, “Watch out for the enemy. . . . Try to see the invisible hands; try to recognize those who are behind it.” He blamed the “spy agencies of the world,” and America specifically, for the unrest and incited chants of “Death to America, Death to Britain, Death to Monafeqin [hypocrites] and Saddam, Death to Israel.” See RFL/RL Iran Report, July 19, 1999, vol. 2, no. 29. 64. RFL/RL Iran Report, July 19, 1999, vol. 2, no. 29. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid. 67. Lotfian was replaced in June 2000 by Brigadier-General Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, who hitherto had served in the Revolutionary Guards Air Force and ran against Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential elections. He thereafter succeeded Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as mayor of Tehran. 68. Jehl, “Despite Police Dismissals, Iran Protest Is the Angriest Yet.” 69. Iran Press Service, July 11, 2000. 70. The letter was published in the July 19 issues of the conservative newspapers Jomhuri-ye Islami and Kayhan. 71. “We have been forced to shut our eyes, remain silent and watch the wilting of a flower which blossomed as a result of 14 centuries of Shia and Muslim suffering. . . . How long should we have revolutionary patience while the system is being destroyed?” See RFL/RL Iran Report, August 1, 1999, vol. 2, no. 31. 72. Ibid. 73. RFL/RL Iran Report, August 2, 1999, vol. 2, no. 31. 74. On September 19 Reuters reported that “Iranian vigilantes” raided a bookshop in the city of Isfahan, seizing seven hundred books, as well as maga -

Electoral Victory, Political Defeat | 201

zines and compact disks deemed anti-Islamic. A member of the Ansar-e Velayat said in an interview that “the books seized in the attack were written by secular Iranian writers and Western philosophers including Jean-Paul Sartre.” All these books had been licensed by the censorship office of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, but one of the attackers said, “The books were corrupting, anti-religious and deviant. . . . Our brothers confiscated them in a popular and spontaneous act after being tipped off by pious people.” See International Press Institute, World Press Freedom Review, Iran (2000). 75. He was later “pardoned” by the Supreme Leader and the sentence reduced to a prison term. 76. ICJ, Attacks on Justice, 200. 77. Quoted in Hossein Seifzadeh, The Landscape of Factional Politics in Iran, in MEI Commentary, 20 August 2002. 78. Samii, “Dissent in Iranian Elections.” 79. Sami Zubaida, Law and Power in the Islamic World (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003), 186, 201. 80. The reform also transferred family jurisdiction from the civil courts to newly established family courts where women may now serve as “legal advisers,” albeit not judges. 81. In 2006 the prosecution was finally reinstated but only for lowerlevel criminal courts, not for the military, press, clerical, revolutionary, and upper-level criminal courts. 82. Mattei has developed a typology of legal systems, which suggests that societies have historically — irrespective of cultural and geopolitical experience— moved through several stages in the relationship between law, society, and power before a state of the rule of law was reached. The early state of “traditional law” is replaced with the formation of the modern state, which standardizes and systematizes law and places it under political administration. Law at this stage is “political law.” Ugo Mattei, “Three Patterns of Law: Taxonomy and Change in the World’s Legal Systems,” American Journal of Comparative Law 45, no. 1 (1997): 5– 44. 83. See “Profile: Iranian Academic Facing Death,” BBC, December 2, 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2518835.stm (accessed June 1, 2005). 84. Bayat, Making Islam Democratic, 130. 85. Iran News, February 4, 2004, in ODVV Newsletter 246, February 4, 2004. 86. On the recommendation of the Supreme Leader, the Guardian Council revised the list and reduced the number of disqualified candidates from 3,605 to 2,500 (of 8,175) but not to the advantage of members of reformist parties. At the same time, it added three more serving parliamentarians from reformist parties to the original 84. See Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), “Machtdemonstration des Wächterrates,” February 1, 2004.

202 | Mirjam Künkler

87. In addition to these, five reformist ministers, four vice presidents, one presidential advisor, the government spokesman, and seventy-six deputy ministers threatened resignation, which, as the head of the electoral supervisory board later pointed out, would be “subject to prosecution under the current circumstances.” See ODVV Newsletter 244, January 25, 2004. 88. Only seven years after Khatami’s spectacular victory in 1997, former ministers, directors of think tanks, publishing houses, and newly established civic associations found themselves in Iran’s most notorious Evin prison. Those that have been released since remain mostly silent and on the margins of public engagement. 89. See Mahan Abedin, “Iran after the Elections,” Middle East Intelligence Bulletin 6, no. 2– 3. 90. See Künkler, “Democratization, Islamic Thought and Social Movements,” chap. 6.