The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; 6163; Iran: Revolution's Second Anniversary

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ROBERT MacNEIL [voice-over]: Today is the second anniversary of Iran`s revolution, but for its aging leader Ayatollah Khomeini, it`s a revolution still threatened by political chaos.

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MacNEIL: Good evening. Two years ago today, the united masses of Iran, led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, swept the Shah from power to make the Iranian revolution. Today, large crowds gathered in Teheran to celebrate, but the themes of the anniversary were political division and economic stagnation. Today`s rally took place on Freedom Square where one person was killed and 40 wounded last week when Islamic hard-liners broke up a leftist demonstration of protest about failures of the revolution. The release of the U.S. hostages has left Iranians free to focus on their increasingly open and bitter political divisions, pitting the fundamentalist clergy against secular groups. Here`s a report from Teheran today by Viznews.

MIKE WILLS: The Ayatollah Khomeini chose the second anniversary of the revolution to issue his strongest warning yet to Iran`s ambitious clergy. The warning, to stop interfering in executive government, was delivered by Khomeini`s son Ahmad to a crowd of more than half a million gathered for anniversary celebrations in Teheran. With the war with Iraq the most pressing issue facing the nation, wounded were carried through the crowd, and President Bani-Sadr arrived from his headquarters by helicop-ter. The President has been fighting a long-running battle with the clergymen for control of his administration, and the appearance of Khomeini`s son on the same rostrum with him was a considerable boost for the moderates. One paragraph of the Ayatollah`s message was repeated for emphasis. It pointed out clergymen serving on courts, committees, and reorganization groups as people to stop interfering in areas outside their competence. President Bani-Sadr did not let the opportunity go by. He followed Khomeini`s message with a stinging attack of his own on his opponents, saying their actions were preparing Iran for tyranny. This is Mike Wills, reporting.

MacNEIL: Tonight, what will emerge from the political turmoil in Iran, and what does that mean to the United States? Jim`?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, the severe infighting for political control of revolutionary Iran began immediately on the very day the revolution peaked and succeeded two years ago. That, at least, is the way Raji Samghabadi saw it. He was in Iran then and remained to watch that internal struggle grow and flourish from then on. Mr. Samghabadi is a native of Iran who was the editor of an English-language newspaper in Teheran for many years. In March, 1979, he joined Time magazine`s Teheran bureau, and until late this fall, he covered the story of Iran for the magazine. Last November he was arrested and jailed for six days. Following his release he fled Iran through Pakistan, and came to the United States. Mr. Samghabadi is with Robin in New York. Robin?

MacNEIL: Mr. Samghabadi, Bani-Sadr said today that the revolution had reached the stage for tyranny, according to one translation. What do you think he means by that?

RAJI SAMGHABADI: By that he means the use of blind radicalism to justify on the basis of hatred campaigns the perpetuation of a regime that is almost half put together by the rabid clergyman in the Islamic Republican Party who have been hiding behind the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini from the very first day of the revolution, and been trying their best to use his name, his prestige, and his political heritage for putting together in Iran what I can see to be very similar, if it is put in place, to an eastern European-style totalitarianism based on an Islamic ideology.

MacNEIL: Are they strong enough to do that now?

Mr. SAMGHABADI: They are certainly not strong enough to do that. Their biggest mistake was to make their ends known too early in the game. The Iranian revolution was not precisely one revolution; it is certainly not an Islamic revolution in the strict sense of the word. Many different groups participated in that revolution with many different aims, and they`re not going to give up despite the crushing majority of the Islamic hordes. That has been diminishing. That`s a very significant fact.

MacNEIL: Now, are these clergymen, who hold the sort of positions we just heard of in that report, are they likely to heed the Ayatollah`s warning today, and simply bow out of politics?

Mr. SAMGHABADI: The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is extremely powerful, undaunt-ed, and unforgiving when dealing with enemies. But unfortunately, in dealing with subor-dinates, he has shown tremendous vacillation and incapacity to intervene at the right time. He has sounded similar warnings in the past; it is not the first time he has done so, and almost every time, his subordinates have started bickering among themselves, and a very short time after the issuance of the warning. I really don`t take such statements very seriously in terms of a counterbalance against the centrifugal forces unleashed by the current power structure.

MacNEIL: In other words, you see that destructiveness going on in the way it`s going on?

Mr. SAMGHABADI: It shall go on-- not only such statements, but I don`t think even the Ayatollah`s direct intervention in favor of any group now can really stop it.

MacNEIL: So, what do you think is likely to happen?

Mr. SAMGHABADI: At the time being, we have two major camps: the Islamic Republi-can Party and President Bani-Sadr`s moderate forces pitied against each other. Now, they have created already an inchoate but increasingly visible battle line between the forces in Iran. Some communists have chosen the side of Bani-Sadr, and some -- the pro-Moscow ones -- have taken the side of the Islamic Republican Party. Then we have the armed forces who happen to be at the moment quite devoted to Bani-Sadr, and very respectful of him, and the Islamic guards who are attached more to the Islamic Republican Party. There is already the underpinnings of a major bipolar confrontation in Iran.

MacNEIL: Amounting to a civil war, a shooting civil war?

Mr. SAMGHABADI: That is a very distinct and disturbing possibility, in my view.

MacNEIL: What do you think the United States -- how the United States could best influence events in what is seen as the Western and American interest there now?

Mr. SAMGHABADI: The United States can only serve Western interests at the moment by remaining aloof, because whatever it says that can be interpreted in any way in favor of any group in Iran, is going to be seized upon by all those factions as a means of whipping up anti-American frenzy, anti-Western frenzy, and perpetuating this hatred campaign, and this hatred binge which tends to raise too much dust behind which the Soviet Union can reach a greedy hand.

MacNEIL: And have the effect of pulling the rug out from under the pro- Western or moderate people we might be trying to support.

Mr. SAMGHABADI: We should use that term very cautiously -- "pro-Western." I do make the assessment and the statement that in the final analysis the kind of conception Mr. Bani-Sadr and other Iranian moderates have of the new polity for Iran does coincide in significant ways with the Western view of democracy, but it does not in any way cor-respond to it fully and thoroughly. If it comes to a-- if it comes, in the American lingo, to the "nitty-gritty," I would say that Mr. Bani-Sadr would lean definitely more toward the West than toward the East, meaning the Soviet Union. But it is insane to think that it is possible through him or anybody else to resurrect within Iran, a U.S. position in any way similar to (hat held under the Shah.

MacNEIL: I see. Well, thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Another view, now, from Sepehr Zabih who teaches political science at St. Mary`s College in Moraga, California. He`s a native Iranian who has written extensively on Iran and its politics. He stays in close touch with events in Iran through ties with the forces of Ayatollah Shariat Madari, a religious leader in the Iranian province of Azerbaijan who is no friend of Khomeini`s. Mr. Zabih is with us tonight in the studios of public station KQED-San Francisco. First, Mr. Zabih, how do you interpret Khomeini`s warning today to the clergy?

SEPEHR ZABIH: I like to draw the attention of our audience that the warning was also against the military. I would suggest that the warning was really a very limited warning. It simply asked the clergy not to interfere in the executive branch of government. It didn`t mean that the clergy should avoid being involved in the judicial branch, in the legislative branch, both of which are firmly under their control. So the way I interpret Khomeini`s latest statement is really compatible with the pattern of his behavior in the recent past. That is to say, sometimes he sides with one faction, sometimes with the others. He likes to stay above politics.

LEHRER: In other words, it`s kind of a meaningless thing, you mean, in terms of the scheme of things. You pretty well agree with Mr. Samghabadi that it isn`t going to change much?

Mr. ZABIH: By and large.

LEHRER: Right. Was there any special significance in your opinion to the words he used toward the military, of course, which, as Mr. Samghabadi said, they`re pretty much aligned with Bani-Sadr right now.

Mr. ZABIH: I would challenge that statement for the reason that the military which was quite effectively decimated after the revolution, is not a homogeneous force. The military may have a faction which is involved in the war against Iraq which is perhaps quite loyal to Bani-Sadr. The military has a faction infiltrated by the Tudeh party -- the Soviet- controlled Tudeh party -- and also we should remember that the Revolutionary Guards, the Pasdaran, not the Islamic Guards -- the Revolutionary Guards, the Pasdaran -- which used to be quite supportive of Khomeini personally, in the recent past have shown some signs that they are not likely to continue to be martyrs for a war of which the future is quite uncertain.

LEHRER: In other words, you think it would be a mistake for Bani-Sadr or anybody else to count on that army to just do what he wants them to do, in case there is a conflict with the clergy. Is that right?

Mr. ZABIH: At this point the answer is yes. What is your reading of what the immediate future holds? Do you agree with Mr. Samghabadi that we may be on the verge of a civil war there?

Mr. ZABIH: Well, that possibility is always there, but I tend to believe that in the short range we could really talk about two scenarios. One is one in which the forces which joined the revolution -- the secular forces - - some of the followers of Dr. Mossadegh, certainly the followers of some of the ayatollahs, the one of whom you mentioned--

LEHRER: Shariat Madari?

Mr. ZABIH: Shariat Madari. And followers of others. We should remember that of the six grand ayatollahs, four have joined in a kind of tactical coalition against Khomeini. They are totally opposed to Khomeini`s interpretation of the Islamic Sharia in terms of the constitution of the new Islamic Republic. Now, these forces might join with the forces loyal to Bani-Sadr; they will be supported, I am sure, by the Mojahedeen who also were alienated by Khomeini`s regime. They may be also supported by that faction of Fadayeen, another organization which suffered a split about six or eight months ago, one side supporting the pro-Soviet Tudeh, the other side opposing the Soviet policies. Now, against that kind of line-up, we can talk about obviously the supporters of Khomeini organized within the Islamic Republican Party; we could talk about roughly 50 percent of ayatollahs who as yet continue to support Khomeini and the Islamic Republican constitution, and certainly, perhaps as of now, a large segment of the Pasdaran, the revolutionary guards. Now, under what condition they might come into an open conflict, it is really very difficult to say. But I would say that within the next few months, that is the kind of scenario that we should watch.

LEHRER: Finally, do you think the makings of a peaceful settlement -- of negotiation, the varied forces coming down and sitting down, and working out something -- is very likely?

Mr. ZABIH: I would say that it is most unlikely.

LEHRER: Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Finally, the views of Richard Bulliet, professor of history at Columbia Uni-versity, and the acting director of the University`s Middle East Institute. Mr. Bulliet, how do you analyze the main political forces in Iran?

RICHARD BULUET: Well, revolutions are wonderful. You have many different views you can have. I see it a bit differently, I think, from both of the previous speakers. The Islamic Republican Party I don`t see as being juxtaposed that firmly to Bani-Sadr`s group in terms of an ultimate showdown. I have a feeling that the Islamic Republican Party has already lost--

MacNEIL: That is the party largely controlled by the clergy whom the Ayatollah was addressing today, which controls the Parliament in a large majority. And the judiciary.

Mr. BULLIET: Yes, and I think that this clerical faction has lost a great deal in the hostage release, that it`s a defeat for Iran; that it`s laid to their door. Bani-Sadr is making a great deal of publicity on this. And it has also suffered from the fact that charges of corruption have been brought against people in the clergy by some of the senior ayatollahs just mentioned by Mr. Zabih. I have a feeling that the clerical faction, then, is not ultimately going to be the party in the showdown. I`m more inclined to see the final showdown -- which I think inevitably must come -- being between Bani-Sadr`s coalition -- and I think it is a coalition -- and the pro-Moscow left. I think that we`re talking about the Tudeh party against Bani-Sadr ultimately, with the IRP, the clerical faction, in the middle, and very possibly being a fulcrum, being able to throw its weight in either direction, but not being able to control or that powerfully influence events in the short run.

MacNEIL: Do you have a feeling whether it will erupt into open civil war, and it will be settled that way, or it will be settled politically?

Mr. BULLIET: I`m disinclined to think of it being a civil war. But there is no real constitutional mechanism for altering the state of affairs and the balance the factions that I can see. If you look at Bani-Sadr`s efforts to rally public support, to take a hard line on the United States, to try and command a strong image as a military leader -- or responsible for military actions -- it`s hard to see where he could go with that image-building coalition-building process in a constitutional fashion. I think it is more likely that a coup is what is in the offing.

MacNEIL: A coup to get rid of Bani-Sadr?

Mr. BULLIET: A coup by Bani-Sadr--

MacNEIL: By Bani-Sadr--

Mr. BULLIET: --to take over.

MacNEIL: In this time, given American and Western interests in the region, can the United States, however unpopular it is in Iran at the moment, sit by and let the situation disintegrate there?

Mr. BULLIET: It all depends on what the United States regards as being ultimately in its interest.

MacNEIL: What do you regard as being ultimately in its interest?

Mr. BULLIET: I feel that the achievable end that the United States could hope to see would be a stable, efficient regime in Iran that would be at least as hostile to the Soviet Union as it is to the United States. Expecting a regime to emerge that is friendly to the United States, I think, is out of the question. In that sense, I would agree with Mr. Samghabadi that remaining aloof is necessary. We cannot be the friends of any of the people that we might conceivably imagine to be friends. None of them really is going to be a friend of ours, anyway. On the other hand, too strong a military presence -- or too strong an assertion of military presence in the area -- could prompt some of, say, Bani-Sadr`s enemies to argue forcefully that support from the Soviet Union is necessary to stave off a possible American move. So that we might, by having too rapid, or perhaps ill-considered a military build-up in the area, we might provoke a reaction that we did not want, even though it was not directly related to Iran.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Mr. Samghabadi, how do you read where popular opinion in Iran is now in this struggle between Bani-Sadr and the clergy?

Mr. SAMGHABADI: I should start by pointing out that when we talk about the Iranian revolution, we are genuinely talking about people. It was a revolution that started from the very bottom. It was a revolution that was not essentially led, even-- not even Ayatollah Khomeini did exercise all that much great influence on the people. As long as he wanted to turn the people into the streets, he could achieve that. But he has not been capable of achieving anything positive yet. In that context, it is impossible to imagine any situation but a coup d`etat, when an attempt to take over by force by a small group of people could succeed. There are hundreds of thousands of army-issued weapons in people`s hands, and there is no dearth of enthusiasm to die and to fight. A bunch of military guys might try something, but in a recent case they wanted to bomb Khomeini`s house a few months ago. They wanted to bomb a few key locations, and then take over. Khomeini cracked a very interesting joke about that which I think is true. He said okay, they have bombed me; now, where the hell do they want to land? Wherever they landed, they would have been torn to pieces.

LEHRER: My question, though, really goes to this point. We know what Bani- Sadr`s saying; we know what Khomeini is saying; we know what the mullahs are saying; and the party and the clergy are saying. Where are the people? Where are the rank and file people in this conflict?

Mr. SAMGHABADI: The people to a large extent are confused. But Bani-Sadr by and large recently has taken on the role of being the spokesman for the people`s complaints. He`s playing a very clever game. Khomeini knows that it`s impossible at the moment to disown him completely and destroy him because, despite the alternative views we`ve heard tonight, I do believe that a significant section of the armed forces will be extremely displeased, and perhaps even paralyzed, in the war against Iraq if something serious against Bani-Sadr was done by Khomeini at the urging of the clergy just now. Secondly, we have a huge majority of Iranians still -- I would say 65 percent of the people -- still loyal to Khomeini, but not really decided who represents him, who enforces his will-- it`s almost a Mao Zedong cultural-revolution-type of an operation now in which everybody tries to pose as the one who understands and enforces the will of the Ayatollah. In this context, the death of the Ayatollah can be the straw that breaks the camel`s back, and can polarize public opinion along very sharply defined lines. To this day, the very people who listen to Bani-Sadr and get very excited because of his criticisms of the clergy, are bound to turn up at another function in which a Bani-Sadr opponent is making a speech.

LEHRER: I see.

Mr. SAMGHABADI: The people get rid of-- it is not possible just now to say to which extent the people will be polarized and willing to fight, but you can simply say that the clerical establishment has lost a considerable amount of support. I would say it has come down from 99 percent to something like 65 percent.

LEHRER: Mr. Zabih, what is your view of what really divides Bani-Sadr and his people on the one side, and the clergy on the other? Is it a simple, raw fight over power, or is there ideology, philosophy, or something else involved?

Mr. ZABIH: All those things, Jim. I`d like to suggest that I wish I were as sure as your other speaker from New York-- how do we know that 65 percent of the people still support Khomeini? All we know that in today`s events, the crowd was about one-third as large as last year, and perhaps one-fifth of the time that the revolution triumphed or Khomeini returned. So it`s very difficult really to be scientific on these matters.

LEHRER: Well, what would be your unscientific assessment of where the people stand in this?

Mr. ZABIH: I would say that when we talk about the people, it is possible to suggest that secular forces representing the middle class and the lower middle class have been gradually alienated from Khomeini, and it is from these forces that presently Bani-Sadr draws his support. But I would like to suggest that this support is not a dependable one because there are many among the middle class people, there are many among the Western-educated people who also blame Bani-Sadr for the deviation of the revolution from its original course which for many of them was to be a democratic revolution, a revolution in search of liberty, and not in search of establishing an archaic theocratic Islamic state.

LEHRER: I see. Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: You had a response, I think, Mr. Samghabadi.

Mr. SAMGHABADI: Sure. I would like to give an indication of where I got that 65 percent figure. Just before I left Iran, I talked to a few key members of the People`s Mojahedeen organization--Mojahedeen Khalgh. They have conducted a secret survey involving 60,000 Iranians. They are more organized and better-equipped than they look on the surface, and on that basis, they have reached even more, I would say, negative results as far as Khomeini`s popularity is concerned. They were talking about 50/50. But then another survey by the minority faction of the People`s Fadayeen, a Marxist organization that underwent a split about eight months ago, showed-- well, based on about 10,000 people, showed that the split was about 45 for Bani- Sadr, and 55 for the Islamic Republi-can Party.

MacNEIL: I`d like to-- since we can`t finally resolve this -- coming back to you, Mr. Zabili-- the other two gentlemen have had their opinion about what the United States could or should do now. Can the United States afford, given Western interests -- let me ask you the same question -- to sit by and see Iran disintegrate, whether through open civil war or through continued impotence and political squabbling, and become riper by the day for some Soviet intervention?

Mr. ZABIH: Yes. In short, become a target of opportunity for Soviet expansionism? I would say really now, the United States could not afford because quite beyond the question of the future of millions of Iranians who regard themselves really as hostages of this theocratic regime, the United States has profound strategic, moral, political interests in the whole region.

MacNEIL: But given the inhibitions the other two gentlemen have mentioned, what can the United States do about it?

Mr. ZABIH: Well, I would say again, in the short run, it should be a kind of benign neglect. But not ruling out the possibilities of responding to Soviet action, direct interven-tion. After all, there is this very important treaty of 1921 under which the Soviet Union could use the pretext of being threatened by events in Iran, and to move in. I would suggest that that contingency should have its counter contingency as far as this country is con-cerned.

MacNEIL: You want to comment on that, Mr. Bulliet?

Mr. BULLIET: Well, that treaty was repudiated by Iran in the past, and only the Soviets seem to regard it as being in force. To me, the likelihood of a Soviet move directly into Iran is quite remote. They have their hands full in Afghanistan; the difficulty of moving into Iran effectively, I think, would be even greater than in Afghanistan, and they must strongly fear what U.S. reaction would be. I don`t think that the U.S. has to really manifest some enormous show of strength in order to act as a deterrent.

MacNEIL: So we have some time, in other words, to--

Mr. BULLIET: I think we have time, and I think that the real problem is going to be what would happen if there were a Tudeh party, pro-Soviet, internal move in Iran, rather than a direct Soviet military adventure.

MacNEIL: Briefly, how much time do you think the United States has to sort of let events evolve there?

Mr. SAMGHABADI: Well, if you allow me, I will briefly analyze the Soviet position in Iran--

MacNEIL: We only have time for two or three sentences.

Mr. SAMGHABADI: Okay. The Soviet Union will have to do away with three eventuali-ties: Afghanistan-type problems; somehow eroding the current Islamic fervor in Iran; and the third point is, to have the complete failure of the Islamic Republic to demonstrate to its own southern Moslem republics -- something like 50 to 67 million Moslems-- that an Islamic revolution doesn`t work.

MacNEIL: We really have to leave it there. I`m sorry to cut you off. Mr. Zabih in San Francisco, thank you very much for joining us. Professor Bulliet, Mr. Samghabadi here. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: That` all for tonight. We will be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.