The Ghost of Khordad:
Lessons from Iran’s Reform Period, 1997 – 2005
Bardia Rahmani
April 29, 2014
On May 23, 1997 a soft-spoken, little-known cleric named Mohammad Khatami
was elected President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, ushering in an eight-year period of
political and cultural reform known as the 2nd of Khordad Movement. Running on a
platform that emphasized expanding personal and political freedom, strengthening civil
society and democracy, and upholding the rule of law, Khatami leveraged a broad
coalition of students, youth, the middle class, women and reform-minded clerics in an
unlikely bid for the presidency. The results of the election were equally unlikely.
Khatami defeated his better-funded and regime-endorsed conservative counterparts by a
landslide, earning 70% of the vote in an election that drew an unprecedented 80% of
Iranians to the polls.1 For the first time since 1979, “the public will expressed at the ballot
box overturned the writ of the conservative leadership.”2
The 2nd of Khordad Movement set to work right away on its ambitious reform
agenda. Loosening long-standing restrictions on the press, the Ministry of Culture
oversaw the creation of 740 newspapers in Iran, most of them liberal and critical of the
regime’s monopoly on public life.3 In 2000, reformists gained a majority in the majles,
Iran’s legislative body, and Khatami won his reelection bid in 2001. As intellectuals,
students, professors and activists began bringing unresolved debates about the nature of
Islam and democracy back into the public sphere, Iran seemed to be on the brink of a
political and social transformation.
By 2004, however, the reformist fervor had almost completely subsided. The
regime rolled back most of Khatami’s early successes, shutting down all but a handful of
1997 Presidential Election. PBS. 16 May 2013. Retrieved 20 April 2014.
Democracy in Iran, 128
3
Democracy in Iran, 135
1
2
2
liberal newspapers, detaining several hundred student leaders and intellectuals, and
regaining a majority in the majles. Khatami’s key political allies either lay dead or
languished in prison. Just six years after the election of Mohamed Khatami, reformist
leader and theorist Saeed Hajjarian finally admitted defeat. “The reform movement is
dead,” he wrote. “Long live the reform movement.”4 Indeed, by the time conservatives
regained the presidency in 2005, Iran’s political and economic landscape looked much as
it had in 1997.
Why, given the initial promise of the movement, did Khatami’s popular mandate
fail to translate into tangible and lasting reform? For his part, Khatami identified two
obstacles to progress: “organized and shallow-minded methods to damage the public's
opinion and dissuade it from reforms on the one hand, and hasty behavior in the name of
reforms on the other hand.”5 Reformist ambitions ran up against the interests of the
conservative regime, an entrenched entity that included the Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Guardian Council, and
fundamentalist clerics in the majles. The conservatives who held the reigns of power used
their institutional authority, intimidation and violence to stymy the movement’s progress
and reverse its initial reforms. Yet, Khatami and his allies also mismanaged their
resources inside and outside the government and failed to exploit political openings as
they arose. In this sense, while the cards were stacked against the 2nd of Khordad, the
movement could have played its hand more effectively. Specifically, reformers might
have come closer to accomplishing their agenda if they had rallied behind more moderate
4
5
Factional Politics, 260
Associated Press, May 24, 2004
3
leaders and causes, maintained greater unity and clarity of purpose, and built up and
carefully managed their political capital.
The regime had initially approved of Khatami’s candidacy as a nominal concession to
the increasingly vocal segments of society—members of the middle class, women, and
young people (who, by 1997, constituted 25 percent of the population).6 By “allowing
moderates a voice in the presidential elections,” the regime sought to legitimize the
expected conservative victor and to “placate popular discontent without threatening the
ruling order.”7 The gambit was a miscalculation. The Supreme Leader and the Guardian
Council, which vets all candidates for political office to ensure loyalty to the principles of
the revolution, “underestimated the election’s ability to bring large numbers of Iranians
into the political process and to challenge the conservative position.”8 Alarmed by the
election results, the loosening of government control on the press (Khatami’s Guidance
Minister Ata’tollah Mohajerani promised “no censorship or auditing of any kind…on
printed materials before they were published”9), and the resulting intellectual atmosphere,
in which critics of the regime began voicing their concerns with greater confidence, the
Supreme Leader “construed the outcome of the 1997 election as a serious challenge to
their control of power in Iran.”10 In the eyes of conservative clerics, the media’s calls to
legalize political parties, make the government more pluralistic and relax social and
political restrictions offered an alternative to the dominant interpretation of Velayat-e
Faqih, the principle that gave Islamic jurists absolute guardianship over the affairs of the
6
Democracy in Iran, 129
Democracy in Iran, 130
8
Democracy in Iran, 129
9
Factional Politics, 257
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Factional politics, 260
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people and state. Facing what seemed to be an existential threat to their rule, the regime
moved to limit the breathing room of Khatami and his ministers.
The regime’s resistance to the reform movement took various forms, both passive and
active. First, conservatives used their “institutional might,” including “control over the
supervisory bodies, the judiciary, and the legislature,” to bog down the movement’s
attempts to open up Iran’s society, military hierarchy and political processes.11
Conservatives retained a majority in the majles until the parliamentary election in 2000,
an arrangement that they used to their advantage. Just weeks after Khatami’s election, the
majles voted 211 to 234 to elect Khatami’s conservative challenger, Nateq-Nouri, as
speaker of the parliament in order serve as a bulwark against the president12. Later that
year, in a move aimed at preempting Khatami’s loosening of public morality laws, the
majles passed a bill that stiffened segregation of men and women in public. Even the
2000 election, which swept 170 reformists into the 290-member parliament to support
Khatami’s “negotiation from the top” approach, was not enough to overcome the
structural barriers insulating the nation from reform.13 Between 1997 and 2004, the
supervisory Guardian Council, the ultimate authority on matters of law, vetoed 111 of
297 pieces of legislation passed by Khatami’s parliament.14
The Guardian Council also took proactive measures against the leadership of the 2nd
of Khordad. Beginning in 1997, the judiciary operated a Special Court of Clergy to
prosecute radicals in the clerical ranks. In practice, the Court tried and imprisoned several
of Khatami’s key ministers and allies. In 1998, the judiciary sentenced Gholamhossein
11
Factional politics, 261
Democracy in Iran, 136
13
Factional Politcs, 261
14
Laura Secor, "Fugitives," The New Yorker, November 21 2005.
12
5
Karbaschi, Tehran’s popular reformist mayor and a prominent supporter of Khatami’s
candidacy, to five years in prison for embezzlement. The next target was Minister of
State Abdollah Nuri, an outspoken reformer helming Iran’s foremost executive body. In
June of 1998, the majles impeached Nuri by a vote of 137 to 117, removing him from
office.15 The Special Court of Clergy would prove a continued threat to the 2nd of
Khordad, sentencing reformists such as Nuri, Kadivar and Yousefi-Eshkevari to lengthy
prison terms.
The Guardian Council also used its judicial powers to roll back Khatami’s signature
achievement: the expansion of freedom of the press. Spurred on by Khamenei’s order to
“find out and punish newspapers that are crossing the line,” the Council shut down
newspaper after newspaper, including reformist publications Jame’eh, Adineh, and
Khordad.16 Exercising its institutional authority over civilian leadership, the regime
silenced the voice of the 2nd of Khordad Movement, kept “the important ministries of oil,
foreign affairs and intelligence…outside of [Khatami’s] full control,”17 and rendered the
majles ineffective. “The sweeping and unbridled powers of the Supreme Leader and the
supervisory bodies”18 had successfully blocked attempts at reform and launched a
political assault against Khatami’s administration.
As elements of the reform movement began to radicalize in reaction to these
measures, the regime’s repression grew more active, to include violence and threats of
violence. Violent repression of reformers fit into a larger strategy aimed at “sponsoring
enough mayhem in the society at large to portray the president as incompetent and a
15
Factional Politics, 261
Factional Politics, 262
17
Democracy in Iran, 136
18
Factional Politics, 259
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6
danger to the survival of the regime.”19 In this task, conservative “pressure groups”
served as the “far right’s physical arm.”20 In January 1999, regime vigilantes associated
with Hizbollah, the Basij and the IRGC attacked the headquarters of the liberal Khordad
publication, physically threatening its editors and writers. These same group went on to
rough up reformists Nuri, Mohajerani and Hadi Khamenehi.21 In response to student
protests against the shuttering of liberal newspapers, police forces raided the dormitories
of Tehran University on July 9th 1999, beating and throwing students out of windows—a
show of force that resulted in dozens of casualties and the death of one student.22
The leadership of the IRGC, an institutionalized paramilitary tasked with
“defending the revolution” domestically, made a string of veiled threats against the
reformist camp. Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, deputy officer of the Revolutionary Guards,
declared that his organization “will react swiftly to anything that would threaten this holy
regime,” and reserved the right to intervene in nonmilitary matters.23 Violent rhetoric
extended further up the rungs of the IRGC leadership. “I am uprooting antirevolutionaries
everywhere,” said Rahim Safavi, the commander of the IRGC. “We must behead some
and cut out the tongues of others. When I see a conspiratorial, cultural current underway,
I give myself the right to defend the revolution against it and my commander, the
esteemed leader, has not prevented me.”24 In 1998, these threats materialized in the form
of the “Chain Murders,” a series of assassinations against high-profile reformist leaders
and thinkers. Some of these attacks included the assassinations of Majid Sharif, Majid
19
Factional Politics, 261
Factional Politics, 261
21
Khordad, January 26, 1999
22
"Six Days That Shook Iran," BBC News, July 11 2000.
23
Factional Politics, 262
24
Factional Politics, 262
20
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Mokhtari, and Mohammad Ja’far Puyandeh, who were secular intellectuals with a strong
desire to establish new forums for like-minded reformers to interact. Saeed Hajjarian, one
of 2nd of Khordad’s key leaders and a popular dissident writer, narrowly survived a
shooting by a Basij militiaman.25 These attacks “aimed to scare ‘alternative thinkers’ in
the country while simultaneously portraying Iran as a dangerous place due to Khatami’s
inability to maintain order.”26
The Chain Murders demonstrate the regime’s tendency to double down in the face
of political and social change. Despite reformist victories at the polls, the conservatives
retained a tight grip on the levers of power—both the formal powers of judicial and
supervisory institutions, as well as the informal powers of the militias and police—and
used them to limit the authority of the president and parliament. The hierarchical nature
of the state proved inimical to outsiders. In the absence of allies inside the clerical and
supervisory leadership, the 2nd of Khordad’s did not have the political influence to
accomplish its agenda. The pattern of actions by the conservative Supreme Leader,
Guardian Council, IRGC and Basij demonstrates the impossibility of reform without tacit
regime approval—or at least the approval of individuals within the conservative
apparatus.
The conservatives in power sought to eliminate the possibility of 2nd of Khordad
winning key allies inside the regime or drawing center-right factions to its cause.
According to reformist politician Behzad Nabavi, writing in the newspaper Salam:
The basic goal of the right from the start was to present Khatami as the
antithesis of [Islamic] “values” and “stability” of the regime, to show that
25
26
Social Movements in Iran, 107
Factional Politics, 264
8
if political development and civil society were institutionalized, security
and order would disappear in society. They also want to create more
opposition against the discourse of the May Movement...The aim is to
steer society to a point where people would say, “despotism is a good
thing and we do not want freedom.”27
The central challenge for Khatami, then, lay in accommodating the democratic urges of
the population within the framework of an Islamic state. The 2nd of Khordad could only
win over hardline conservatives if it resisted the narrative that placed Islam and civil
society at odds with one another—a narrative that viewed the “Islamic Republic” as a
contradiction in terms. To this end, Khatami tried to sell conservatives his vision of
“Islamic Civil Society,” an understanding of democracy “that was both non-Western and
in line with the Islamic Shia tradition.”28 The goal of Khatami’s gradualist strategy was to
demonstrate that democratization, liberalization, and reform were compatible with the
fundamental tenets of velayat-e faqih, and that conservatives and the religious right had
nothing to fear from change. However, immoderate leaders and policies served to weaken
the 2nd of Khordad’s narrative in the eyes of the clerical establishment.
The 2nd of Khordad movement’s choice of leadership did little to assuage
conservative fears. The very quality that endeared Khatami to the youth, women and
secular middle class—his reputation as a force for change and the unique style and
substance of his rhetoric—put the clerical establishment on edge. His dismissal as
Minister of Culture in 1992 for being overly “permissive” marked him as a political
27
28
Factional Politics, 265
Factional Politics, 255
9
outsider from the outset. Khatami was thus fighting an uphill battle to gain the regime’s
trust before he had even taken the oath of office.29
Yet, the regime might have overlooked Khatami’s past if he had surrounded
himself with moderates and reigned in radical voices in the aftermath of the 1997
election. His failure to do so reinforced the conservative perception of 2nd of Khordad as
a danger to the Islamic state. Khatami’s newly-appointed Minister of Culture Ata’tollah
Mohajerani held little credibility with the IRGC and defense community, as he had been
“condemned for previous hints about the need to renew ties with the United States and
other liberal views.”30 Conservatives saw Ministry of State Abdullah Nuri as a “real
menace,” having “incurred their wrath” by removing a host of rightist officials from the
ministry immediately following the 1997 election. Nuri’s refusal to dismiss Kerbaschi,
the mayor of Tehran targeted by the Special Court of Clergy, was tantamount to
“opposing the wishes of the leader himself” and contributed to his impeachment in
1998.31
The reform movement’s greatest lightning rod, however, was Ayatollah HusseinAli Montazeri, a senior Islamic scholar who had fallen from the Supreme Leader’s favor
in the 1980s. A towering figure of the 2nd of Khordad among students, Montazeri
advocated for structural rather than incremental reform. His criticisms extended to
Khamenei’s religious qualifications and the corruption of the regime, which he compared
to that of the deposed Shah. In a sermon on November 14, 1997, Montazeri questioned
the nature of the valayat-e faqih, arguing that the Supreme Leader should fill a
29
Stephen Kinzer, "Voice for Change Makes Iran Vote a Real Race," The New York
Times, May 23 1997.
30
Factional Politics, 260
31
Factional Politics, 260
10
“supervisory” role rather than remain “in charge of everything.”32 Montazeri’s alternative
understanding of the Islamic state—an understanding that “challenged the very
philosophy of the Islamic regime and highlighted the harsh realities established under the
Islamic rule”—provoked a conservative backlash against the 2nd of Khordad’s political
and intellectual leaders. According to Iranian journalist Azam Teleghani, Montazeri
“crossed a red line that unfortunately had released unusual propagandistic impulses.”33
Paradoxically, the harder the 2nd of Khordad’s leaders pushed for reform, the harder the
conservatives believed they had to push back—and the more unlikely the reforms became.
By adapting a critical tone, Montazeri, Nuri and Mohajerani reinforced conservative fears
of radicalism and caused the regime to dig in its heels.
The liberal press contributed to the 2nd of Khordad’s perception problem. Soon
after his win in May 1997, Khatami directed his Guidance Ministry to lift restrictions on
the creation of newspapers and to loosen censorship laws. In December of the same year,
Khatami established an Assembly Guild to protect writers and journalists. “Because
newspapers and journals could be established quickly, had a fast production time and an
avid readership,”34 Khatami saw the press as both a communicative channel for the
reform movement as well as an immediate victory to present to his coalition. Hundreds of
newspapers sprang up. Reformists of every kind were quick to “take advantage of voicing
their views in the columns of the daily press.”35
The new administration’s decision to put freedom of the press at the center of its
reform agenda, to recall Khatami’s self-criticism, was an example of “hasty behavior in
32
Middle East Contemporary Survey, Volume 21
Democracy in Iran, 135
34
Khatami’s Iran, 142
35
Khatami’s Iran, 143
33
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the name of reforms.” Once unleashed, the flood of liberal newspapers proved hard to
control from above. Given the heterogeneous nature of the reform movement and the
diverse beliefs of the coalition, the press proved an “intrinsically unreliable channel to
articulate the reformist cause.”36 The message of secular intellectuals, for example, ran up
against Khatami’s message of gradual reform from within the Islamic system.
Emboldened by their newfound freedom, “new newspapers…both agitated and provoked
the jurisconsult camp by debating controversial religio-political topics that the
conservative establishment held as sacrosanct.”37 When certain of these papers began
openly criticizing velayat-e faqih, they crossed the regime’s “red line” that separated
tolerable reform (i.e. gradual change through institutional means) from revolutionary
thoughts and actions.
Sensing that their backs were against a wall, the regime framed the newly
invigorated press as a direct threat to the integrity and safety of the Islamic Republic. The
conservatives “accused the guidance ministry of supervisory laxity” and labeled the idea
of civil society as “nothing more than a virulent plot to secularize Islamic Iran.”38 IRGC
commander Rahim Safavi declared: “These days newspapers are published that are
endangering the national security and are in line with the words of the enemy and the
United States.”39 Khatami, too, warned Iranians of the “misuse of freedom by certain
Khatami’s Iran, 142
Factional Politics, 257
38
Factional Politics, 263
39
Factional Politics, 262
36
37
12
sections of the press40 as well as the "great danger to the national security and people's
faith if the enemies of the Islamic revolution control or infiltrate the press.”41
The early success of Khatami’s anti-censorship efforts ultimately worked to his
disadvantage. The regime used the worst excesses of the liberal press to unite
conservative factions against reformist journalists:
Through their attacks on IRI political actors and talk of constitutional
assaults on the Leadership Office, [the newspapers] pushed regime
moderates, fearful of damage to their political and/or economic interests,
into the conservative camp.42
Once the regime had portrayed the newspapers as a danger to the Islamic Republic, it
began to equate the goals of the press with those of the Khatami administration. In short
order, “radical elements in the liberalized press came to define for many the real goals of
the politics of change.”43 The Supreme Leader seized the opportunity to delegitimize the
2nd of Khordad as a whole and to gather support for a reactionary response, including the
shuttering of papers, intimidation of writers, and storming of the headquarters of student
publications. The repression of student newspapers, and the subsequent university
protests in 1999, forced Khatami to publicly condemn the student movement ahead of his
2001 reelection bid; in doing so he kept his candidacy, but spurned a major segment of
his coalition. After Khatami’s betrayal, students and lay reformers came to view the
40
Democracy in Iran, 137
Nazila Fathi, "Iran Leader Bars a Bill Restoring Freedom in Press," New York Times,
August 7, 2000.
42
Khatami and Gorbachev, 346
41
43
Khatami and Gorbachev, 346
13
president as “more of a safety valve for public frustration than an agent of tangible
change” and the 2nd of Khordad began to disintegrate due to internal disunity.44
Khatami’s failure to manage the very newspapers he was liberalizing alienated
conservatives, broke apart his coalition and diminished his political capital. Yet this
outcome was avoidable; Khatami may have been able to win key allies to his cause by
pursuing a more measured reform, one based upon common interests between reformists
and conservatives. From early on, Khatami’s agenda was “geared toward cultural and
political change, and less so toward economic issues.”45 By fixating on civil society,
Khatami ignored a political opening that arose in 1997: the chance to address growing
economic discontent. Khatami might have been able to build his political capital by
pursuing economic reform “more effectively than did the Rafsanjani administration” and
making this effort the centerpiece of his domestic agenda.46
A reform movement based in the economic rather than sociocultural realm would
have offered the 2nd of Khordad movement a more promising path toward lasting reform.
First, because “the political opening in 1997 had increased interest in economic reform”
many voters who joined his reform coalition “had done so in the hopes that he would
improve economic conditions.”47 A focus on economic development—including
negotiating trade agreements, seizing on the Clinton administration’s overtures to lift
sanctions and normalize economic relations, and investing in structural changes at
home—would have satisfied many of Khatami’s core constituencies, especially the
middle class and youth. Second, Khatami could have used economic reform as an avenue
44
Basmenji, Tehran Blues: Youth Culture in Iran. p. 274.
Democracy in Iran, 135
46
Democracy in Iran, 136
47
Democracy in Iran, 136
45
14
for affecting change on a small scale. Rafsanjani, a moderate with a shrewd grasp of
politics, understood the need to couch reform in economic language. As president,
Rafsanjani’s “reforms came under an economic title, his social freedom agenda under the
pretext of making the investment and business environment in Iran more attractive to
foreigners.”48
Finally, Khatami could have used success in the economic realm to win over
conservative allies to his cause. While certain conservative factions stood in fundamental
opposition to the 2nd of Khordad, others had significant areas of interest in common with
the movement. The “modern-right,” though traditional in many respects, “still strove to
establish a modern industrial economy, which entailed higher taxation, foreign borrowing
and investment, and the kind of structural changes that were inspired by the World Bank.”
In the view of the modern-right, the management of a complex economy required a
“more dynamic velayat-e faqih.”49 This shared view might have formed the basis of
future reform, assuming Khatami and his ministers could earn the trust and ease the
concerns of the technocratic conservatives.
Even small achievements on the economic front would have built a reservoir of
political capital for reformers, one that Khatami could have later drawn on to accomplish
his more ambitious reforms. Only after his reelection in 2001 did Khatami come to
realize that “the achievements of the conservatives were made possible due to their use of
economic and social slogans and their promises to improve economic conditions in
48
Nourbakhsh, Amir Ali. "Features: Khatami & Rafsanjani: Similar Goals, Different
Legacies." Features: Khatami & Rafsanjani: Similar Goals, Different Legacies. Payvand,
02 May 2005. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
49
Khatami’s Iran, 148
15
Iran.”50 By 2001, however, it was too late; the regime had already set itself up in
opposition to the reformists. If, at the time of the 1997 election, Khatami had recognized
the value of moderate economic reform, he might have resisted conservative efforts to
demonize the 2nd of Khordad and expanded the scope of his reformist coalition. As such,
the inability of the administration to “present a clear economic plan made it more difficult
for the reform movement to consolidate its hold over the coalition that had brought
Khatami to power.”
An analysis of the failure of the 2nd of Khordad movement offers would-be
reformers a source of caution as well as hope. On the one hand, the Iranian regime has
proven remarkably resilient in the face of change. Zealous in its religious doctrine,
protective of its national security, and suspicious of even moderate social and political
transformations, the regime wields its institutional power to block reform from the inside
and physical power to prevent revolution from the outside. Because it retains a monopoly
in matters of violence and law, there is little that any party, leader or protestor can do if
the regime decides to dig in its heels.
Yet, on the other hand, a strategy of moderate reform can prevent the regime from
doubling down in the first place. The 2nd of Khordad alienated the conservative apparatus
and squandered its chance at reform by allowing radical leaders and ideas to predominate,
failing to unite around a common platform, and neglecting to define common interests
with conservatives. Yet, today, the Rouhani administration shows promise in all the areas
in which Khatami fell short. Rouhani is a moderate leader with political capital and the
trust of Iran’s most important political player, the Supreme Leader. He has amassed
50
Khatami’s Iran, 148
16
important allies as a result of his experience in the parliament and as Iran’s top diplomat.
His platform—to fix the economy and improve relations with the West—is contained,
targeted, and popular. Above all else, Rouhani understands how to frame moderate
reform as a means of strengthening the Iranian state. Rouhani drew all the right lessons
from Khatami’s eight years in power. In this sense, the 2nd of Khordad represents not a
dead end but a starting point on the road to reform.
17
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