Reform or Not? Iran's Milestone Election

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Such concerns have led the clergy to approach the elections with caution. "The conservatives still claim to rule in the name of the majority of Iranians, and they're feeling pressure from the rising public reaction against their policies," says Dowell. Ironically, the mullahs may be suffering some of the consequences of their own success. Their 20-year revolution has seen Iran's demographic majority shift decisively from the countryside to the cities, while an Islamic version of women's empowerment has become a major force. The number of female students at Tehran's university grew from 25 percent in 1979 to 55 percent today. Whereas the primacy of the clergy had been an established principle in Iranian village life, the urban youth who now make up a growing plurality of the population tend to vote overwhelmingly for reformist candidates. Likewise women voters, as Khatami proved in the 1998 presidential election.

Iran's revolution financed its first decade through oil revenues, but collapsing crude prices combined with massive unemployment among a burgeoning youth population have made kick-starting the economy — with a large dose of Western investment — a critical priority, a fact that has moved even such stalwarts of the revolution as former president Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani into the pro-Khatami coalition. That, of course, is a mixed blessing. "While Rafsanjani's influence could be a major factor in preventing a dangerous backlash by hard-liners after the election," says MacLeod, "he'd be likely to slow down the pace of political and social reform."

Keeping young Iranians on board for a patient chiseling away at the grip of the mullahs has proved a major challenge for the reformists, particularly after last summer's protests showed their mounting impatience. But the complex distributions of power and repressive instincts of the conservatives prescribe a gradualist approach among reformists. "If Iran is to complete the dizzying road from theocracy to democracy," says MacLeod, "reformers must find a way to speak to the Internet generation as well as to older Iranians who feel more comfortable with Islamic traditions and like to be assured that the reform movement remains loyal to the ideas of Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution." And this is no mere subterfuge: Khatami himself is a veteran of 1979, while the reform movement's most important ideological figure may be Ayatollah Ali Montezeir, the imprisoned liberal theologian who had once been Khomeini's handpicked successor. "Although the elections are likely to give Khatami a stronger hand to push his reform agenda," says Dowell, "the real struggle for a new Iran may be going on behind the walls of the seminaries where more and more clerics are challenging the conservatives' view of the extent of the clergy's political authority." That's a tortuous process to which ordinary Iranians can't directly contribute. But Friday's poll gives them an opportunity to send the mullahs a message.

Newsfile: Iran and its Revolution