Hot on the heels of their landslide victory in parliamentary elections, Iran's reformers yesterday set out their programme for a more open society, promising to open up to the foreign media and even the US.
Emboldened by their victory in parliament, long a bastion of their conservative opponents, the reformers pledged to end a five-year-old ban on satellite dishes aimed at shutting out the foreign media.
Their leader, Mohammad Reza Khatami - brother of President Mohammad Khatami - also promised to create a "new atmosphere" with the US and to get to the bottom of some of the murkier scandals to have hit the Islamic republic in recent years.
"We support the free flow of information - that's why, once we're in parliament, we're going to change the law which bans satellite dishes," said Mr Rajbali Marzrui, newly elected deputy from the central city of Isfahan for the main reformist faction, the Islamic Iran Participation Front.
He promised the new majority in parliament would swiftly repeal the ban on dishes imposed in 1995 to prevent the Islamic republic being invaded by "Western depravity".
Standing alongside him, Dr Khatami - poll topper in Friday's election - said that parliament would also work to create a better atmosphere for Iran's long-troubled relations with the US. "Parliament doesn't have a direct role but it will be able to create a new atmosphere which may help to eliminate tensions," he said.
But he stressed that the reformers, whose triumph was hailed by Washington, would be no soft touch and would continue to demand a relaxation of US economic sanctions in return for any thaw in ties. "We attach great importance to our national interests and we want relations of equality," Dr Khatami said.
The reformist leader, who has a good chance of being elected speaker of the new parliament and steering his older brother's programme through the legislature, also vowed to get to the bottom of scandals that have outraged reformers in recent years.
He said that parliament would launch its own investigations if the authorities failed to come up with convincing explanations for a series of murders of dissidents in late 1998 as well as a violent police clampdown on a campus demonstration last July which led to the worst unrest in Tehran since the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution.
A fellow reformist deputy, Mr Hamid-Reza Taraqi, criticised the outgoing conservative-led parliament for dropping an inquiry into the brutal killings which shocked public opinion.