Moderate Cleric Is Landslide Winner of Iran Presidency

TEHRAN — In a shocking rebuff to the country’s ruling elite of conservative mullahs, former Culture Minister Mohammad Khatami won Iran’s presidency in a landslide Saturday and secured a historic mandate to expand freedom and moderate policies in this Islamic theocracy.

In voting that resembled nothing less than a plebiscite for change, moderate Khatami won a stunning 20.7 million of 29.7 million votes cast.

It was a remarkable achievement for a 54-year-old cleric and philosopher who was vilified and relegated to an obscure post as head of the national library five years ago for holding too-liberal views, someone whom most analysts had written off as a certain loser as recently as early last week.

Confounding the skeptics and riding a tidal wave of voter discontent--especially among the young, intellectuals and women--Khatami secured a nearly 3-1 victory margin over his ultraconservative foe, early favorite Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri, who received just 7.2 million votes.

Even in the seminary city of Qom, headquarters of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, where a group of conservative mullahs still sets the religious tone and policies of the Shiite Muslim state, preliminary returns showed Khatami winning with more than 290,000 of 400,000 votes cast, state radio said.

Despite the size of Khatami’s victory, public reaction here in the capital was muted. Although a few people waved Khatami placards in traffic and some bakers passed out celebratory sweets, there were no large gatherings at Khatami’s headquarters or home. Police patrols downtown appeared heavier than normal, and in at least one instance officers irritably dispersed journalists trying to obtain comments.

The outcome was more than a personal setback for Nateq-Nuri, the anti-Western leader of Iran’s parliament for the past eight years. It was also an embarrassment to the entire political establishment in Iran, starting with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the religious watchdog Council of Guardians, which had indicated its preference by listing Nateq-Nuri’s name first when it announced the four qualified presidential candidates.

Khatami won the most votes cast for any candidate in the Islamic Republic’s tumultuous 18-year history, with turnout estimated at 90%--easily exceeding one-sided turnouts in 1993 and 1989 for his predecessor, Hashemi Rafsanjani.

His tally was comparable to the number of yes votes cast in the heat of the revolution in 1979 to formally create an Islamic state after the downfall of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

“This was the people’s will, and there were some people who did not believe in it,” said Ahmad Boorjhani, an Iranian journalist. “Only in the last two weeks were people starting to believe themselves that they could have their say.”

A pro-Khatami political analyst, requesting anonymity, said: “It’s a vote for new ideas, new people, maybe a more responsive government, for a furthering of the trend toward respecting law and the freedoms that are in the constitution.”

The defeat for the conservative camp showed how much the country’s leaders have lost touch with the mood of the people, the analyst said.

“They are not in the society to a large degree,” he said. “They thought that if they had the political institutions, the combatant clergy and the rulers, then they had it won. They were mistaken.”

“This was an anti-establishment vote,” agreed another analyst, this one a professor close to Nateq-Nuri who also asked not to be identified by name. “Most of the people know Khatami is not that much different from the rest of them; they just wanted to show that they’re fed up.” The professor described the conservative hard-liners as “angry” that they let the election slip away from them.

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The conservatives were not acknowledging a humiliation. Instead, Khamenei and Nateq-Nuri issued cordial statements to congratulate Khatami while drawing attention to the heavy turnout, which they said was proof of the people’s commitment to the Islamic government as a whole.

Diplomats and political analysts in Tehran said Khatami will still face strong opposition from various centers of power in Iran as he tries to pursue more liberal policies, particularly from the powerful Society of Combatant Clergy, the Council of Guardians and the conservative parliament voted in last year and still led by Nateq-Nuri.

Khatami also will have to work hard to resolve differences in the disparate coalition that brought him to power. It ranges from radical leftists who despise the West and advocate state control of the economy to moderate pragmatists linked to Rafsanjani who want to privatize the economy and seek closer commercial relations with the outside world.

During his campaign, Khatami said he would remain independent and not become a “puppet” of either group supporting him.

Analysts said they expect him to move cautiously to relax strictures on free speech and publications, and they said they believe he will try to move quickly to forge a partnership with Rafsanjani and other moderate centrists to turn Iran in a more moderate direction.

Required to leave office by Iran’s two-term rule, Rafsanjani will head a newly strengthened and expanded Expediency Council, a body of senior officials responsible for resolving differences among the branches of government.

From there, Rafsanjani will continue to wield great power through personal loyalties and attachments he has built up over his years at the top echelons of Iran’s political system.

In his new post, many observers believe, Rafsanjani could remain the de facto No. 2 in the country’s political hierarchy, even outranking Khatami.

A senior advisor to Khatami said he will probably hold his first news conference Wednesday or Thursday, after the electoral results have been ratified by the Council of Guardians. Khatami stayed out of the public eye Saturday but did meet with a small gathering of top aides and supporters.

“He was very calm,” the advisor recounted. “He was thinking about the heavy responsibility he has now and what he will do.” His first statement reportedly was to “forgive” those opponents who had been attacking and harassing his campaign in the past few weeks.

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Unlike Khatami, who entered the race in earnest only a few months ago, Nateq-Nuri had been campaigning unofficially for at least a year, ever since the 1996 parliamentary elections.

But his often strident religious declarations and the preference given him by the state media seemed to lose him more voters than he gained. People feared Nateq-Nuri would make limits on speech and on dress for women even more restrictive than they are now, a Western diplomat said.

For instance, it was widely rumored that he intended to mandate that women in public wear the traditional chador--a long, hooded, one-piece black garment--to cover themselves in accordance with Islamic beliefs. Many women prefer head scarves, worn with calf-length coats and pants in different colors, a form of modest dress that is at least tolerated by authorities.

“Nateq-Nuri dug his grave when he said he was going to force them all to wear the chador,” said a retired government worker in Tehran’s northern suburbs. “I have never seen so many women going to vote.”