Factoid:
In Iran, the period of greatest anti-Western sentiment ended with the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. Since the 1991 Gulf War, in which Iran stayed neutral, moderates have slowly gained against hard-liners.
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Iran Moderates Seen Gaining Over Hard-Liners
Led by moderate president Mohammad Khatami, a new spirit of intellectual freedom is sweeping Iran, but not without strong opposition.
Start Date: 5/10/99
Iran's moderate president Mohammad Khatami, a middle-rank cleric who is the nation's highest popularly elected official, is making substantial headway in relaxing the hard-line atmosphere that has reigned in Iran since the revolution that toppled the Shah in 1979. Muslim hard-liners, who oppose liberalization of the press, freedom of speech and other Western-style human rights, are becoming increasingly desperate as Khatami's influence and popularity grow, regional observers say.
The struggle is far from over, because the supreme power in Iran is still in the hands of unelected Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a staunch hard-liner who has final say on most governmental matters and also has direct control of the Intelligence Ministry, the judiciary, the armed forces, and the broadcast network. But Ayatollah Khamenei and his allies can see their influence waning.
The latest showdown came on May 1, when a vote in the Majlis, or parliament, that was supposed to impeach president Khatami's reformist culture minister, Ataollah Mohajerani, ended up endorsing him instead. Mohajerani has called for a more open press and freedom of expression for intellectuals. No sooner had he made such recommendations than public criticism of hard-line policies burst into the open more strongly than ever. The failure of the Majlis to impeach Mohajerani was a stinging defeat for the hard-liners and the first time since 1979 that popular sentiment was visibly running against the supreme rule of the Ayatollahs.
Short of a military coup, observers say, there may be little that the Ayatollahs can do to stem the erosion of their power and the gradual liberalization of Iranian society. There is little doubt that the Ayatollahs would do anything to prevent that -- they see their situation as nothing less than a war between good and evil -- but the Iranian military is considered strongly supportive of president Khatami.
 Excelsior, Michael Lindemann's new novel (written under the pen name Michael Paul), depicts a wholly plausible near future in which human cloning is both widespread and widely abused; terrorists have access to target-specific biological weapons; recreational space travel is commonplace; and mounting pressures of global climate change, environmental decline, population growth and civil unrest inspire radical new approaches to urban security.
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