The student protest movement in Iran shows no sign of abating and is increasingly mirroring the power struggle between reformist and conservative factions of the regime. The movement originated when a conservative judge sentenced a leading reformist academic to death for apostasy last month because he attacked theocratic rule and called for the equivalent of a Protestant reformation in Iran.
Although only a minority of them is so far involved in these protests the student body as a whole is increasingly unwilling to accept such decisions, which are part of the long-standing conflict between President Muhammad Khatami and the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. There are several signs that the complete policy impasse between the two, which has lasted for the last five years, is coming to an end and will soon be resolved one way or another. The death sentence is now being reviewed, but the paramilitary guards who have previously intervened against student activism are being used again.
President Khatami has put forward two bills intended to prevent the conservative Council of Guardians vetoing reformist candidates in the 2004 parliamentary elections and strengthening constitutional freedoms against a conservative watchdog body. They are the real point of the present power struggle. It comes as the international and regional context affecting Iran is changing rapidly. The crisis over Iraq puts Iran's position in a different light. In any United States led war against Saddam Hussein Iran would become a focus for the southern Iraqi Shia population and other opposition movements.
Iranian reformists aspire to replace Saudi Arabia as a possible strategic partner of the West in the oil-rich region, so long as Iran's independence and equality is respected. They are willing to open up relations with the US and Europe on this basis, escaping their country's classification as part of the "axis of evil" identified by President Bush in his inaugural address. Iran's support for terrorism has been reduced and there is little evidence that they are building up weapons of mass destruction. An emerging theme of US diplomacy concerns the need to encourage democratic trends in the Muslim world - and Iran would seem to be an obvious candidate for that role.
There would be strong popular support in Iran for such a strategy; but it would spell an end to clerical rule - and it is unlikely the conservatives will concede power peacefully. That is why Iranian politics seem destined to attract more international attention.