Editor's Introduction - )

Social Research, Summer, 2000 by Arien Mack

The decision to organize this issue on Iran was made a little more than one year ago, during the first term of Khatami's presidency. This was a time of genuine optimism in Iran, when the possibilities for liberalization appeared to be within reach. The country seemed on the verge of changes that would increasingly relax the grip of clerical orthodoxy which took hold soon after the 1979 revolution. In the context of this atmosphere of hope, we wished to provide our readers with a picture of life in Iran twenty years after the revolution that deposed the Shah and brought the Ayatollahs to power.

As recently as this January (January 2000), about a month before the first round of parliamentary elections, I had the good fortune to visit Iran, where intellectuals and academics with whom I spoke were remarkably optimistic, convinced that democratization and liberalization were inevitable and would occur rapidly. The outcome of the February elections, in which reformist candidates were overwhelmingly endorsed, seemed to provide strong confirmation, even though this optimism was not shared by most of the women intellectuals and academics with whom I spoke. They seemed far less convinced of the inevitability of change, a difference reflecting the great difference in their position in society. While women now can and do work alongside men, the rules governing their lives from their rights with respect to marriage and children to what they can wear--contrast sharply with those governing the lives of men, so their struggles, not surprisingly, are not the same as those their fathers, brothers and husbands. Nevertheless, it is clear that they too recognize and work to promote the reforms initiated by Khatami.

But today, only four months later, the news is astonishingly different. Eighteen reformist newspapers in Tehran have been forcibly shut, including one run by President Khatami's brother; the outspoken editor of one paper has been gunned down in the streets of Tehran and those who have been found guilty have received inappropriately light sentences given the gravity of their crime, while others whose only crime has been to speak out in favor of greater freedom have been summarily jailed. The former President, Rafsanjani, who was barely reelected to the Majles (the Parliament), delivered a Friday sermon in which he made a blistering attack on the reformist press, expressing strong support for its silencing, and most recently he has announced his resignation from the Majles, although he maintains his powerful, non-elected position as head of the Expediency Council. The 13 Jews accused of spying for Israel are finally being tried in Shiraz with procedures reminiscent of Moscow show trials. The first student protests since last summer have occurred and, if there are others, they could provide the occasion for even harsher measures--which is why President Khatami continues to urge calm. Now that the Majles has convened, one can only hope these repressive events will abate and turn out to be just one more detour in the "tortuous" transition to democracy.

Because Social Research is a quarterly, it of course cannot be responsive to daily changes in political life. For the most part this makes no difference, since our issues generally are not time-sensitive. Not so this one. Because the situation in Iran changes from day to day, I would like to make clear that the articles in this issue could not take into account recent events such as the opening of the new parliament (which now includes the 26 of the 29 elected reform candidates from Tehran who were finally authorized) or the arrest of 7 and subsequent imprisonment of 4 who attended a conference in Berlin on "Iran After the Elections," a conference approved by Iran's Foreign Ministry (see the following page for a letter of protest against the arrests). Nevertheless, the appraisals of conditions in Iron since 1979 that you will find in these pages do provide a map for understanding the past and for thinking about the present and future of a country which has been off limits to most of us for a long time.

In closing I would like to thank all the people whose help made this issue possible and regret that I can mention only a few of them. Hamid Dabashi, Mehdi Faridzadeh, Nasser Hadian, Bijan Khajepour-Khouei, Azar Nafisi, and Kian Tajbakhsh were my tutors and facilitators. I also acknowledge my great debt to Hossein Kamaly, whose advice was always reasoned and whose seemingly divine interventions made everything easier.

(*) A note about the transliteration of Persian words: All we have tried to do is keep the transliteration consistent across the papers in this issue. We have not tried to apply any of the various transliteration styles used by scholars.