Fighting for Moderation

That kind of support all but ensures there will be a conservative victory in the parliamentary vote. Indeed, the reformists acknowledge Ahmadinejad's popularity in villages and small towns but say that he is winning it at the long-term expense of the nation. "He is running the country like a charity by spreading the easily earned oil money across the country without thinking about the disastrous economic consequences it may have," says Noori. "The only reason why Ahmadinejad has managed to survive is the revenue from selling oil at $103 per barrel. If the price of oil comes down, the country will be engulfed in chaos and mayhem." Reformists like Noori believe that it will take some sort of economic disaster or foreign military threat, most probably from the United States or Israel, to alert the hardliners running the Iranian government—especially Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei—to the dangers of Ahmadinejad's populist extremism.

That's unlikely to happen anytime soon. So for now the moderates are pursuing a two-tier approach. They want to have some presence in the parliament in order to keep their political presence alive. "If we didn't take part in the elections, the hardliners would have totally dominated the parliament, closed our offices, and that would be the end of us as reformist activists," says Shariati. Surviving, even with the tiny number of seats they're expected to win, will also allow the reformists to prepare themselves for the presidential elections in June 2009. But first the reformists have to deal with divisions within their ranks. The likely reformist candidates for the presidency are former president Mohammad Khatami and former speaker of the parliament Mehdi Karrubi—perhaps the only contenders with enough stature to prevent the Council of Guardians from disqualifying them from the race. The factions, however, have presented different lists of parliamentary candidates and display little inclination to mend fences. In an exclusive interview with NEWSWEEK this week, Karrubi called Khatami a weak politician and said his allies were extremists "who questioned the Islamic component of the Islamic Republic." In turn, Khatami's allies say that Karrubi is a pretender and not a real reformist.

Noori, for his part, is spending the time ahead of Election Day working as the unpaid editor of the reformists' Web site. He operates out of an old building full of like-minded disqualified candidates who jokingly call themselves "the notorious." They try to keep their minds off their imminent defeat by putting on brave faces for young volunteers who have had enough of Ahmadinejad. But privately the reformists acknowledge that even their best-case scenario predicts a mere 40 out of 290 seats in the Iranian parliament. As little as that, they hope, would at least keep their cause alive—at least until the next vote comes around.

© 2008