Reformist Warns West that Pressure on Iran is Threat to Democracy

Gareth Smyth, The Financial Times:

It is five years since Saeed Hajjarian was shot in the head. Every day since then has been a long, hard struggle from coma and partial paralysis through physiotherapy to speech therapy and hours on a treadmill improving his strength and co-ordination.

"Of course the same kind of attack could happen in Iran today," he says. "At the top level, little serious work has been done for democracy, even if trends lower down - a growing middle-class, urbanisation, people organising themselves - have helped."

Mr Hajjarian, who remains one of Iran's most influential intellectuals, was known as "the brain of the reformists" when he took a bullet in the face at a point-blank range as he arrived at Tehran City Hall. READ MORE

At 51, Mr Hajjarian is a reminder of the price some Iranians have paid for reform. But he is an engaging rather than a miserable man, a lover of poetry and music, apparently devoid of self-pity and keen to warn the western world its pressure on Iran is strengthening the forces it claims to oppose.

"To threaten Iran, nearly every day, America is looking for any excuse - the nuclear issue, terrorism, human rights, the Middle East peace process," he says. "There are different US pressures but some make the situation here more militarised, and in such an atmosphere democracy is killed."

For Mr Hajjarian, US policy was more fruitful under President Bill Clinton, when as a way to ease tension Madeleine Albright, secretary of state, acknowledged Washington's role in the military coup that toppled Mohammad Mossadegh, the popular president, in 1953.

Having been shot by an Islamic militant who served two years in prison for the crime, Mr Hajjarian has reason to be concerned by the landslide election of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, a fundamentalist conservative, as Iran's new president.

But he opposes sanctions against Iran, applied by the US since the 1979 Islamic revolution and likely to be extended if Iran's talks over its nuclear programme with the European Union break down and Tehran is referred to the United Nations Security Council.

"There can be no comparison with apartheid South Africa, where an already strong opposition was boosted by sanctions. This isn't the case in Iran, where sanctions hurt the people."

Reformists commonly argue that western pressure on Iran builds support for the regime and encourages the influence of the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij, an Islamic militia. For Mr Hajjarian, Mr Ahmadi-Nejad's victory shows both the strength of unelected elements in the Islamic republic and the fragile nature of its democracy.

"It's a question of how entrenched democracy is. If Iran were like France, there would be no problem - [Jean-Marie] Le Pen could have got elected and the other parties would have the chance to win next time. Our election showed a hidden government acting covertly. It's like a ladder of democracy - of rather semi-democracy - that someone climbs up and then kicks away."

Mr Ahmadi-Nejad will be less a president, he continues, than the representative of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, in the executive arm. "He won't even drink water without the leader's permission."

But Mr Hajjarian admits Mr Ahmadi-Nejad's election campaign tapped genuine popular appeal and was far more skilful than those of his opponents.

"He worked on four rifts - he was for the poor against the rich, for university people against the clergy, he was for the nation against the state and for religious people against secularism."

All this makes Mr Hajjarian pessimistic about the reformists' prospects, at least in the short run.

"Neither the parliament, the city councils, nor the presidency [all in conservative hands] will help us. But we are now becoming the opposition, and a non-violent one. The illegal opposition in Europe and the US can do nothing. They are idle."

And then Mr Hajjarian rises. "Look," he says. "I am on my feet." He isn't steady, but after five years, he can stand.

Iran is a democracy in name only. The candidates are selected by the clerics. Reformists like Saeed once had some power in Iran but if Iran achieves real democracy the reformists may lose it all.