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The problem is that these days, at least, the conservatives still have their fingers glued firmly to the levers of power in Iran, including the 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guards. One Iranian political scientist has engaged in the morbid task of trying to calculate the odds that Khatami will remain in office. His verdict: a 70% chance that radicals will try to overthrow Khatami. He's giving 5-1 odds against the possibility that Khatami will still be around in a year's time. Some in Iran argue that conservatives have already staged a "silent" coup, by intimidating the media and attacking Khatami's key aides. The arm of the hard-liners has stopped short only of Khatami himself. Last year they put presidential confidant Abdollah Nouri on trial for publishing anti-Islamic articles. Though the transcript of his pro-democracy court testimony became a best-selling book, Nouri got a five-year jail sentence.
He was lucky. Earlier this spring, as conservatives jockeyed to have their electoral showing nullified, extremists tried to assassinate Saeed Hajjarian, the strategist who helped push Khatami's supporters to victory. Khatami got news of the shooting as he was speaking in southern Iran. He dropped his prepared text, angrily denounced political violence and went to the bedside of the critically wounded Hajjarian. Later, aides recalled, the President could barely speak as he choked back his tears.
It is a Sunday morning in Tehran. On the streets, traffic buzzes by. In a modern apartment fitted with medical equipment, Hajjarian lies on a cot wearing only green pajama bottoms as a physical therapist works the flabby muscles of his left arm. Hajjarian's left side remains paralyzed from the March shooting, but his mind is sharp, focused on Iran's turbulent transition. Slurring his speech as he summons his energy, he explains that his rendezvous with a would-be assassin was a reminder of the danger from conservatives. "They were convinced that I was against the system," he says of the five men convicted of shooting him. Iranians, he says, must understand that reform means working for the nation, not against the conservatives. "Young supporters of reform want greater speed," he explains, counseling patience. "The important thing is not the speed but the direction." Yet there is a whole generation of clerics, businesspeople and politicians who are eager to enact reform--now. "Khatami," says Ghaffar Azizi, a city councilman from Kurdistan, "is making democracy a habit for Iranians."
Hasan Yusefi-Eshkevari, for instance, is a mullah who has fallen for that habit. He is a radical of sorts, calling for an end to authoritarian ways and arguing that democracy and Islam are not incompatible. During a recent discussion at his Tehran home, he proudly showed off his daughter's piano, a symbolic rejection of clerical injunctions against entertainment. He's paid the price for his music: reprisals began when militants tried to assault him at a speech. Then a judge summoned him for arrest after his appearance at a conference in Berlin--prompting a temporary European exile.