Who will replace him? Confrontation between
the majority of moderates in the majlis and the
unelected clerics was resolved by forcing out the
moderates in the February 2000 elections. A
twelve-member Council of Guardians responsible
to the Supreme leader appointed for life, the
Ayatollah Khomeini, has powers that override
the President and Parliament. The Guardians can
veto any laws passed by the majlis that they declare
to be incompatible with the constitution and
Islam. They control parliamentary candidates
and the judiciary which savagely punishes anyone
denigrating mullah rule. When in November 2002
Hashem Aghajari was sentenced to flogging and
death for blasphemy, attacking the religious rule
of the ayatollahs and criticising the peoples’ readi-
ness to emulate them like ‘monkeys’, the students
erupted and were not pacified by Khomeini’s
assurance that the sentence would be reviewed.
Police and troops under the clerics came down
hard on them and once more restored order.
Iran is a country full of contradictions. Not as
extreme as the hated Sunni Taliban, for instance
women enjoy full access to education. From time
to time the moral police makes examples of men
and women behaving immodestly in a non-
Islamic way, at other times outside Teheran they
close their eyes to the freedoms practised by the
younger generation. Surprisingly prostitution is
widespread. The middle classes feel relatively free
in their lifestyles, only conforming outwardly.
The attractions of Western life are irresistible and
not necessarily incompatible with Islam. But
democracy cannot coexist with theocracy. There
is much corruption, the police are paid to ignore
a party; satellite dishes provide an illicit window
to the wider world. Freedom of speech and
information does not exist, newspapers are shut
down, arbitrary arrests and exemplary punish-
ments are commonplace. The morals police is par-
ticularly stifling in the cities, above all in sprawling
Teheran inhabited by 12 million people. Despite
the potential of oil and gas riches, the inefficiency
of state control keeps most of Iran’s rapidly
increasing population trapped in poverty with one
in five unemployed. ‘Hatred’ of the US is artifi-
cially organised and not shared by the Iranian
people who long for the riches of Western life
denied them. Despite the atmosphere of fear and
repression, Iranians were able to express their atti-
tudes in the only democratic elections, despite
their failings, held in the Arab world. They could
choose and change the ‘sub-leadership’ of presi-
dent and majlis, and do so in opposition to the
will of the conservative clerics. After 2003 this
was no longer true. The clerics banned more than
2000 of the opponents from standing as candi-
dates at elections in February 2000. The out-
come: a conservative Majlis is compliant now, and
the previously reforming Khatami has lost the
will to do more. The likely future? A split among
the clerics and a less hands-on interference in the
political and everyday life of the people is possi-
ble. Iran’s isolation as a pariah state, despite its
place on Bush’s axis of evil, is breaking down as
European nations have adopted a less hardline
approach and wish to profit from business. But
the freshly elected president is determined to
maintain US pressure on the clerics to relinquish
power and with it the threat of nuclear-based hos-
tility. The clerics will not risk a devastating war
with the US and will make the minimum conces-
sions needed, especially in its nuclear programme.
For a time the West will live uneasily with a dif-
ficult neighbour. Reform in Iran is encouraged by
Western examples but it is likely that it will have
to be brought about by Iranians themselves.
The longevity of rulers whether secular or
Islamic is one characteristic of the Arab Middle
East, only death or revolution removes them. The
list is long: Chairman Arafat (1953–2004),
Egypt’s Mubarak (1981– ), Syria’s Hafez Assad
(1970–2000), followed by his son Bashar more
of a figurehead for the ruling Baathist party. The
family heads of Arab clans raised to royalty have
longevity inbuilt: in Jordan, King Hussein
(1952–1999) and in Saudi Arabia, King Fahd.
There have only been two supreme leaders – the
ayatollahs – in Iran since 1979, and Gaddafi, one
of the younger long-lived rulers, has ruled since
1969 in Libya. But a new generation is emerging
during the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Parliamentary sovereignty and free elections, the
development of the political parties opposed to
each other but working within an agreed consti-
tutional framework took two centuries and more940 GLOBAL CHANGE: FROM THE 20th TO THE 21st CENTURY