|
|
 SPENCER
MICHELS: The news bulletins on Iranian State TV had a familiar ring
this weekend; unofficial vote counts had pro-reform candidates winning
a big majority in run- off elections for parliament. The count gave
allies of pro-reform President Mohammad Khatami 52 of 66 seats; the
results resembled the tallies from the first round of parliamentary
elections in February, when pro-reformers won 120 seats. Together the
two rounds of voting would give the reformers a solid majority in the
expanded 290 seat Majlis, but the complication is that only some of
these results are official, reflecting the fault line running right
through the middle of current Iranian politics.
 President
Khatami and his reform allies seem to have won numerical control over
parliament, and the ability to pass laws granting Iranians more personal
liberties, but the many of the election results have yet to be validated
by Iran's other power center: the council of governors, the supreme
religious body controlled by Islamic fundamentalists and loyal to the
supreme leader, Ali Khameni. The council and religious conservatives
also dominate the judiciary, military, and Iranian broadcast media.
The council already has invalidated 16 of the election results from
February, and over the weekend threatened to block the election of another
29 reformers who won first round balloting in Tehran. The council said
the Tehran elections were marked by fraud. Between the February election
and Friday's runoff, the power struggle also was fought in other arenas.
 The
hard line judiciary shut down 16 reformist newspapers and magazines.
Several leading advocates of increased freedoms were also jailed on
charges of undermining Islam. President Khatami and his allies urged
their supporters to stay calm and not take to the streets, provoking
a tougher crackdown. Khatami's major rival-- the supreme leader Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei-- has voiced personal support for the president while denouncing
his allies and their reformist agenda. In one speech, Khamenei said
legal violence was permissible against enemies of the state, a remark
he later withdrew. (Chanting) At the same time, Iran's relations with
the United States and other western nations, as well as Israel, have
been exacerbated recently by Iran's trial of 13 Jewish Iranians on charges
of spying for Israel. Five of the defendants have now pleaded guilty--
including two today-- and they have insisted their pleas were not the
product of coercion or torture. The defendants face a possible death
penalty in the non-jury trial in Shiraz. Some 25,000 Jews remained in
Iran after the 1979 revolution, while almost 40,000 left for other countries,
including the United States.
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: The United States is prepared to increase efforts
with Iran aimed at...
 SPENCER
MICHELS: In March, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright offered to
ease some restrictions on trade between the U.S. and Iran, but Albright
and other western diplomats, as well as major Jewish groups, said since
that the fairness and the outcome of the trial could help determine
western eagerness to improve relations with an Iran headed by a pro-reform
government.
|
|
