A Fever Bordering on Hysteria

By Pico Iyer

After five years, Khomeini still seems in full control of Iran's revolution

Through the streets of Tehran they streamed, the wounded and the widowed, old men and young in the blood-red headbands of the suicide squads, a quarter of a million in all. "Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to France! Death to Russia!" they chanted in unison as Ahmed Khomeini, 35, son of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, called for Islamic unity. Thunderous roars of approval arose as young victims of the war passed by on parade, swathed in bandages or seated in wheelchairs. Around them on every side, portraits of a glowering Khomeini stared down to discourage unholy thoughts and whip up further support. The grand finale of "The Ten Holy Nights," February's celebration of the fifth anniversary of the Islamic Republic, seemed to uncork a patriotic fever bordering on hysteria. "Iran is in a state of great excitement," said a high Japanese official who recently visited the nation. "You feel a strong, flaming energy in Iran."

Five years after Khomeini's return from his Parisian exile to seize power in his homeland, his government of once inexperienced revolutionaries seems firmly in control. The ruling mullahs (religious scholars) and some 100,000 Islamic Guards who protect them have, to be sure, lost some of their popularity and remain saddled with myriad difficulties: the fitful 41-month war with archenemy Iraq, which continues to drain men and money; a ruling class already decimated, and always threatened, by tenacious urban guerrillas; 2 million refugees from the front and another 1.5 million from Afghanistan; and the stigma of international isolation. But during a rare ten-day visit to the country, which has remained virtually closed to Americans since 1979, a TIME reporter found that the Ayatullah's regime has managed, for the moment, to weather these challenges with surprising agility. It has settled nearly all its international debts, signed up a steady stream of volunteers to the suicide-running Basij corps and, on paper at least, silenced most of its opposition. "It's really quite amazing," says an American who does business with Iran, "that they are doing as well as they are."

Khomeini at 84 seems to be as unexpectedly resilient as his regime. Living off a strict regimen of boiled potatoes and raw vegetables, he is, say foreign visitors, rosy-cheeked and relatively healthy. His brother, Ayatullah Pasandideh, is still going strong in his late 90s. Though Khomeini has not been seen outside his closely guarded home in the old village of Jamaran for three years, he still oversees every political aspect of his country's day-to-day affairs, while holding court each day before a host of visitors.

In the course of such meetings, Khomeini has exhorted his supporters to strengthen his regime when they cast their ballots in a much postponed election for the 270 seats of the Majlis, or national parliament. Already the mullahs are so sure of their control that they have, here and there, relaxed their stranglehold over cultural life. The local radio station that plays a weekly program called The Lies of the Foreign Radio Stations now features Beethoven symphonies too, and the numbingly familiar TV diet of propaganda and prayers is relieved on occasion by plays about Iranian historical heroes. Though even foreign women must don head scarves and can expect anxious nudges from security guards if a single wisp of hair falls into view, some Iranian women have begun with impunity to try on flesh-colored stockings or a touch of mascara. Even notorious Evin Prison, where up to 70 inmates have reportedly been kept in a single one-man cell and 200 killed in an evening, has been renamed a training school and made to seem more glossy than grisly. In honor of the anniversary celebrations, the government issued a four-color brochure showing Evin inmates taking dips in its pool, working out in its gym and enjoying field trips to local museums. Nobody, however, is likely to forget that Khomeini's regime remains politically unbending and brutally unforgiving. On the day of the anniversary parade, 27 supporters of the opposition were secretly put to death in Evin.

Such incidents have become less frequent if only because, as one foreign diplomat puts it, "the mullahs have wiped out practically anyone who is not a mainstream fundamentalist." According to opposition guerrillas, Khomeini's men have executed 30,000 dissidents in all, while keeping more than 100,000 political prisoners behind bars. The ruling mullahs admit to just 2,000 to 3,000 executions, but they have nonetheless systematically eliminated every group that does not conform to their beliefs. Last May they forced the Tudeh Communist Party to denounce itself publicly and disband. In August they suspended the Hojjatieh Society, an esoteric Shi'ite Muslim splinter group that refuses to interpret the Koran in the fashion approved by the mullahs. During the past five years the regime has also incited mobs to desecrate the shrines of the Baha'i faith, drive thousands of adherents out of their homes and kill at least 150Baha'is.

The mullacracy extends the same harsh treatment to independent-minded individuals. In 1982 Khomeini betrayed few qualms about having his former right-hand man and Foreign Minister, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, executed; last July, when his fiercest hanging judge, Ayatullah Mohammed Gilani, asked permission to spare 340 penitent political prisoners, the Ayatullah overruled him and sent them instantly to their deaths. The government continues to interpret "counterrevolution" broadly enough to cover a multitude of so-called sins. Homosexuals, drug dealers and unfaithful wives are all targets for the firing squads. A woman who neglects to wear her head scarf may find herself thrown into a "reeducation center." According to the much feared governor-of

Evin Prison, scarred and sunken-faced Azadollah Lajavardi, "Someone who makes a photocopy, or provides a car or a house for counterrevolutionaries, is but a link in the chain of terrorism."

The center of that chain is represented by the Islamic socialist guerrillas known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq.

During 1981 and 1982 alone, they succeeded in eliminating 500 government leaders, fully 70% of Khomeini's top brass. But although they have scored relatively few victories recently, the guerrillas are by no means ready to accept defeat. "We are dealing with Khomeini in our own way," Mujahedin National Commander Ali Zarkesh, 34, said in his Tehran hideout to an Iranian journalist. (The group's overall leader, Massoud Rajavi, is in exile in Paris.) "We are slowly suffocating his regime, spreading a creeping paralysis throughout his military-police apparatus." The most wanted man on the Ayatullah's hit list, Zarkesh remains convinced that the ruling clerics could be brought down by a violent upsurge of the same sort of resentment that originally brought them to power. "Upon Khomeini's death," he says, "without awaiting further instructions, Mujahedin cells throughout Iran shall stage an all-out offensive on the regime. Analysts who say that we have been reduced to a small band of assassins are going to be in for a nice shock."

For the moment, however, authorities may be less unsettled by such external threats than by their own internal divisions. The Ayatullah has established 20 different agencies for intelligence and security. All of them jockey for position by twisting Khomeini's proclamations, as well as the Koran, to their own advantage. According to Dr. Ardeshir San'ati, a former full colonel and key medical officer in the Army, who recently fled to the U.S., "The Islamic Guards see Iran as their personal fiefdom and treat all others, especially the armed forces, as their serfs." Since a system of Islamic justice superseded a formal judiciary, moreover, litigants have taken to playing off one capricious clerical judge against another, while powerbrokers have simply taken the law into their own hands. After colliding in a scramble to seize private land, two government officials ended up drawing guns on each other in a courtroom last August. Having effected a shaky truce, the judge declared a 30-minute recess, left the room and never returned.

But the regime's most urgent dispute revolves around economic policy. To the left is a group, headed by Khomeini's probable successor, Ayatullah Hussein Ali Montazeri, 61, which contends that the revolution was, is and always must be conducted on behalf of the downtrodden. They favor redistribution of income, nationalization of foreign trade and land reform. "We please the middle and lower classes," said President Seyed Ali Khamene'i, 44, last summer, "and let big landlords, big factory owners and the wealthy seethe in discontent." Opposing them are the ultrarightist clerics who insist that the Koran unequivocally condemns such socialistic practices. The Prophet Muhammad, they point out, was once a merchant, who said, "The merchant is among God's favorites." The leftists were rebuffed 16 months ago when the social reform bills they proposed were vetoed by the Guardian Council. But last summer they made up some ground by edging out of power the Ministers of Labor and Commerce, who had consistently supported the ownership of private property.

The matter is crucial because Khomeini has come to realize how little he can afford to antagonize the bazaari, the prosperous and traditional merchants who helped finance his overthrow of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Four years ago the Ayatullah sneered that "economics matters to donkeys." By now, he has been heard to confess, "If the bazaar opted out of the Islamic Republic, the republic would face defeat."

In mollifying the merchants, however, Khomeini does not want to shortchange the common man, whose interests he claims to champion. By last year local black-marketeering had become such a fine art that rice cost five times as much in Tehran as in New York. In April, therefore, the Ayatullah issued a withering diatribe against "heartless hoarders and overchargers" and launched a brutal purge against "economic terrorists." Thousands of small traders were fined, imprisoned and publicly whipped; in August two black-marketeers were sentenced to death.

Despite that drive, Iranians still face a wealth of economic anxieties. The government issues coupons for basic rations through the mosques, but those supplies are invariably meager: they include few basic protein items, no more than ten eggs per person each month, and only 3 lbs. of meat each fortnight for a family of five. Thus, people are left with no alternative but the black market, where a pound of mutton sells for $15 and a pound of premium imported tea for more than $150. Sometimes 150 people will line up just to buy oranges. For the average factory worker, who takes home $450 a month, luxuries are even more unthinkable: a pair of jeans can fetch as much as $450, and those who are not lucky in the government lottery must part with $35,000 for a small family car. Meanwhile, senior clergymen are ferried around town in shiny bullet-proof Mercedes limousines, and Islamic Guards drive gleaming Toyota Landcruisers.

To make matters worse, Iranian economists maintain that inflation is running at several times the official 20% rate. Of the national work force of 12 million, 5 million are unemployed; industry, meanwhile, is running at only 40% capacity. The scars from the war with Iraq are apparent on every front: some 3,400 factories in the four front-line provinces have been destroyed or extensively damaged; Iran's largest port, Khorramshahr, has been incapacitated; the disruption of irrigation and the flight of farmers in war zones have caused $ 1 billion worth of cattle to perish. Yet the regime seems scarcely interested in attending to such problems. For the fiscal year ending in March 1983, the Islamic Revolution Records, ostensibly a record-keeping body but believed to be a front for KGB-trained secret police, was budgeted to receive 60 times as much money as dam construction and harbor repair combined. This year at least one-third of Iran's oil revenues (which account for 95% of its national income) will be used for the war.

At the same time, the regime has worked hard to present itself as an up standing member of the international financial community. Since March 1983 it has abided by the production quotas and prices set by the 13-nation Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

According to the governor of the Central Bank, Mohsen Noorbaksh, the nation has cut its foreign debt from $7.4 billion in 1978 to $500 million. In 1983 alone Iran repaid $419.5 million to the American Export-Import Bank and also returned $350 million to France. Noorbaksh claims that within four years of the Ayatullah's takeover, Iran had accumulated foreign exchange reserves of $13 billion, higher than at any time during the Shah's rule. Foreign businessmen, mostly from the West, can again be seen all over Tehran.

Nonetheless, this hospitality is merely a concession to pragmatism. The Islamic Republic numbers among its foreign friends only Syria, Libya and North Korea. For the most part, Iran remains egalitarian in its hatred of both East and West, politically nonaligned with a vengeance.

One derisive float at last month's fifth-anniversary parade showed cartoonish effigies of Uncle Sam and a Soviet soldier struggling for control of the globe, and passengers landing at Tehran's Mehrabad Airport are still greeted by a sign that taunts, THE U.S. CANNOT DO A DAMNED THING!

The regime holds firmly to the belief that it is a religious duty to export revolution until an Islamic empire under the banner of Khomeini stretches from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean--or beyond. Khomeini supporters were said to have been behind the food riots in Tunisia and Morocco earlier this year; authorities also believe that the Iranian-sponsored Al Dawa Party, a group of Iraqi subversives, organized six car bombings in Kuwait last December. Most alarming, some 2,000 Islamic Guards are positioned just inside the Syrian border, from where they make frequent trips into Lebanon to train Shi'ite terrorists. The government refuses to acknowledge ties with Islamic Jihad, the terrorist group that has claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing that killed 241 U.S. servicemen and 58 French troops in Beirut last October, as well as other Middle Eastern attacks, but Tehran does not hesitate to applaud the terrorists' acts. The October bombing was celebrated in Iran as "the action of patriotic heroes."

Although the regime's expansionist ambitions have been thwarted by the bloody and seemingly interminable battle against Iraq, the Iranian army has remained surprisingly well armed and high spirited. Indeed, the war that Iraq's President Saddam Hussein launched in 1980 to topple Khomeini has so far only consolidated his hold. Some 45% of Iran's 42.5 million people are under 14, and many seem fired by a passionate loyalty to the Ayatullah. Perhaps 50% of the suicide-driven Basij corps are teenagers; eight-year-old zealots who stay at home may serve the regime by informing on their parents, sometimes sending them to the firing squads. "Considering our opposition to the regime," says a U.S. analyst, "we'd like to see cracks in the foundation.

But frankly they're not there."

Divisions may begin to surface once Khomeini is gone. Informed rumor has it the Ayatullah has already sent the name of his chosen successor, in a sealed envelope to be opened at his death, to the 60-man council of clergymen that will formally decide the issue. His most likely choice is Montazeri, the mastermind of the regime's attempts to export its revolution. But the short (4 ft.

11 in.) heir apparent, who is religiously ill qualified and oratorically uninspiring, has failed to excite much respect. Whoever succeeds Khomeini, however, faces what could be an impossible task:

trying to maintain the fierce momentum built up by his revolution.

Not until that attempt is made will it become clear how much of the regime's strength derives from Khomeini and how much from his ideas. --By Pico Iyer