ALTHOUGH she is the granddaughter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the 1979 Islamic revolution, Zahra Eshraghi has long been a prominent leader of reformists seeking to liberalise Iran.
She wants to break the hard-liners' lock on power and says the former reformist president Mohammad Khatami must, therefore, run against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he comes up for re-election in 2009.
"The only way to save the country is for Kha
tami to run next year in presidential elections. He is the only one who will defeat Ahmadinejad," she said.
She was speaking ahead of tomorrow's parliamentary elections that Mr Ahmadinejad's allies and other conservatives are expected to win, maintaining their hold on the legislature. The opposition has been crippled in the race after the clerical leadership disqualified 1,700 candidates, most of them reformists.
Mr Khatami has said in the past that he has no desire to return to the presidency, which he held from 1997 to 2005. But he remains the reform movement's most charismatic figure and is under pressure to run.
He has been campaigning for the reformists' slate of little-known parliamentary candidates, giving speeches that have drawn crowds of thousands.
To westerners, Ms Eshraghi may seem an unusual figure to be in the reform movement's ranks. Her grandfather brought the idea of "velayat-e-faqih" – rule by Islamic clerics – into reality in 1979. In the system that has evolved since then, the powers of unelected clerics, headed by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, trump those of the elected government. They can overrule laws and bar from elections any candidate seen as insufficiently adhering to the Islamic republic system.
Ahmadinejad allies and other conservatives are running in the election as "Usulgerayan" – Farsi for "principlists", touting their loyalty to the principles of Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution.
Ms Eshraghi says hard-liners have hijacked the revolution, which she says was meant to bring freedom to Iran. "This is totally against the goals of the revolution and contrary to the views of Imam Khomeini," she said. "With this trend, nothing remains of the republic. And they have left nothing of freedom."
Ms Eshraghi, who is married to Mr Khatami's younger brother Mohammad Reza, himself a senior reformist leader, said that, because of the disqualification of candidates, she did not think there would be even a powerful minority bloc of reformists in the next parliament.
But she claimed the hard-liners would fail in the long term. "In this era of communications and flow of information, the young generation won't accept that few hard-liners decide their fate," she said.
Her husband has said Ayatollah Khamenei – Khomeini's successor – should not act as if his authority is absolute, a rare public criticism of the supreme leader that could have got him arrested.
As far as the Ahmadinejad camp is concerned, even the family of Ayatollah Khomeini has not been immune from their rhetoric. Ms Eshraghi's brother, Ali, sought to run in tomorrow's elections but was among those disqualified. He was later reinstated, however he decided to drop out of the race to preserve Khomeini dignity after hard-liners began to criticise his family.
Hard-line media and websites unleashed a wave of anger last month against Mr Eshraghi's cousin Hasan Khomeini after he criticised the head of the Revolutionary Guards for a speech seen as backing Ahmadinejad's camp in the election.
Some of the attacks went after his integrity, accusing Mr Khomeini – who is caretaker of his grandfather's sprawling tomb complex on Tehran's outskirts – of taking gifts from reformers. More moderate conservatives went to his defence, and the editor of one of the websites was jailed for insulting the Khomeini family.
Ms Eshraghi was in the reformist camp long before Mr Ahmadinejad came to power, as an advocate for women's rights and an influential party figure during the reformists' stint in power.
Mr Khatami was swept into the presidency by a landslide in 1997 elections. Three years later, reformists swept elections to take over parliament, and the younger Khatami brother became deputy speaker.
That marked the reformists' brief heyday. They were able to bring a more liberal atmosphere, loosening Islamic restrictions on women's dress, music and other social activities.
But hard-liners, backed by the clerical leadership, blocked concrete political change. In 2004, most reformist lawmakers were barred from running for re- election, and hard-liners took over. A year later, Mr Khatami had to step down because of term limits, and Mr Ahmadinejad won the presidential vote.
Mr Khatami is now eligible to run again. A respected cleric, he would be difficult to disqualify from standing. But some reform supporters see him as tainted by the failures of his government, saying he was too hesitant to push hard for change.
IRANIAN POLICE CHIEF ARRESTED IN BROTHEL TO BE TRIED IN SECRETTEHRAN'S police chief, who led a sweeping crackdown on "immorality", has been forced to resign after being caught in a brothel with six naked prostitutes, according to reports from Iran.
Reza Zarei was arrested three weeks ago, released on bail and is to be tried in secret after tomorrow's parliamentary elections in Iran, unofficial Iranian websites said.
The country's official media have been banned from reporting the scandal which is highly embarrassing for the Islamic Republic. Tehran likes to portray prostitution and other social vices as ills that afflict mainly western societies.
But the purported reason for Zarei's resignation has become a key topic of gossip in tea houses, coffee shops and on the internet, Iranian reporters told The Scotsman.
Zarei has been a household name in Tehran since last April when he launched the capital city's toughest moral crackdown in years. Aiming to "elevate security in society", he targeted women who flouted the strict Islamic dress code and ordered raids on underground parties.
He declared in September that snooker halls and cafés were in his cross hairs because they were "one of the main grounds for social and ethical crimes".
At the time he boasted that 5,700 people, including 1,400 men, had been sent to "guidance classes" on how to behave in society.
The full article contains 1027 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
