LOSING FAITH : Iranians’ Revolutionary Zeal Is Cooling As Hard Times Challenge the Islamic Ideals of the Republic

ON FEB. 1, 1979, THE DAY A TRIUMPHANT AYATOLLAH RUHOLLAH Khomeini returned to Iran, ending almost 15 years of exile and more than two millennia of Persian monarchy, Ramin Kashani was a graduate student in engineering at USC. For months, the political turmoil engulfing the Pahlavi dynasty had fired the young Iranian’s imagination.

“I could barely study for thinking about the revolution--and all the changes and opportunities it would produce,” he recalled recently, a smile warming his handsome face. “For my generation, it was the most exciting time in our lives.”

Khomeini’s return, the climax of the revolution, was more than Kashani could take. Less than three weeks later, he abandoned his studies and returned to Iran. “At the end, I don’t remember it involving much of a decision,” Kashani told me in his comfortable Tehran apartment. “I knew I wanted to help rebuild my country after the end of a long dictatorship. I was willing to give up something important to work for something I believed in. Like most Iranians,” he added, his eyes staring into the past, “I thought my future was in the revolution.”

Indeed, Khomeini’s tumultuous welcome has been compared to the ecstatic turnout for Charles de Gaulle when he returned to Paris at the end of World War II. With the exception of monarchists and others who had thrived politically, financially or socially during the half-century reign of the two Pahlavi shahs, millions of Iranians from all social classes initially had almost quixotic visions of their revolution.

I visited Kashani, now 35, married and a father, exactly 14 years after he made that decision. This meeting came during the anniversary commemoration called “Ten Days of Dawn,” so named because the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s government, propped up by what was then the world’s sixth-largest army, crumbled 10 days after Khomeini’s return.

The anniversary converted Tehran, a lively but drab, polluted and overpopulated capital, nearing 12 million, into a festive city, at least for 10 days. The tree-lined boulevards were brilliantly lighted with imaginative arrangements--all green, red and white, the regime’s tricolors. Bright pastel banners proclaimed the revolution’s triumphs and intentions. “This is the beginning of God’s government,” one heralded.

Fourteen years after the birth of the modern world’s first theocracy, Kashani, a self-selected pseudonym, represents the largest stratum of society, those most disillusioned. Unlike many of his Western-educated peers, he has remained in the Islamic Republic. Thousands have fled back to Southern California--which now has the largest population of Iranians outside their homeland--or to France, Canada, Britain and other Western countries. But within a year of his return, he quit the revolution. Today, he’s in private business, and he doesn’t bother to vote.

“The revolution was made for my generation. But we are the ones who’ve suffered the most,” he said as we sipped cups of sweet tea. “The young have lost the most jobs in this mismanaged economy. We’ve lost the most lives during the war with Iraq. It’s even hard to get married because there’s no new housing.”

I had similar conversations all over Tehran. Among merchants in the bazaar and university intellectuals, among the old as well as the young, in wealthy northern neighborhoods and among the hizbollahi --partisans of God--in the capital’s poor southern suburbs, the revolution’s errant course dominates public discourse.

The Islamic Republic has reached a precarious juncture, most of all because of disenchantment among its original supporters. The “Ten Days of Dawn” were often dismissed this year as the “Ten Days of Suffering.” To mark the occasion, bakery sweets, medical exams and a host of other things were provided free. One old man boarding a Tehran bus, told he didn’t have to pay the fare, grumbled, “They steal the whole country and give us back a 10-rial ride!”

Even the once-omnipotent mullahs are not exempt from public disdain. At a dinner party during the anniversary, a young hostess shared the latest gossip. “I’ve heard mullahs say taxis won’t pick them up anymore,” she related in astonishment. “So, imagine, they have to stand on the street and wait until one pulls over!” Nodding, her husband added, “The atmosphere is increasingly anti-clerical and getting worse.” Both had been ardent early supporters of the revolution, as were most of their guests.

Iranians have always been grumblers; the art of complaining is surpassed only by the wealth of irreverent humor about politics and personalities. But by this year’s anniversary, their disenchantment had begun to take on new dimensions--and to get a new spin. Using uniquely Persian logic, revisionist history in Tehran now separates the revolution from the theocracy it spawned.

“I don’t call the people in power the revolution. This government stole the fruits of the revolution,” Kashani explained. “The real revolution was suppressed more than 10 years ago, when the new freedoms were then taken away, step by step, day by day. And now,” he added, with greater weariness than anger, “we have very little of the real revolution left.”

THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC APPEARS TO BE WELL-ENTRENCHED FOR A SYSTEM that was not expected to survive a few months, much less well over a decade. On the basis of the world’s first fully Islamic constitution, mullahs run the presidency, Parliament and Supreme Court largely unchallenged. No opposition force either inside or outside the country, ranging from right-wing monarchists to the leftist Moujahadeen-e Khalq, seriously threatens the regime. And it still espouses grand ambitions that chill Western capitals with fears of an Islamist tide.

Yet from the outset, Iran’s revolution was destined for a big fall. The use of religion as a political idiom elevated the revolution’s principles and promise to utopian heights that no state, much less a Third World nation, could ever hope to achieve. Besides the inherent vulnerability, the country’s various constituencies each had independent visions of revolutionary Iran; each now believes the revolution has gone awry for a different reason.

Intellectuals have been disappointed by the lack of freedom for secular political groups. The Islamic Republic’s political spectrum is instead defined in religious terms, and parliamentary representation of Muslims, Jews, assorted Christians and Zoroastrians is proportionate to the numbers in each sect.

On the other extreme, ardent Islamists have been angered by compromises the mullahs made on issues that once defined the theocracy. After eight bloody years of war, the most devastating development of the revolutionary period, Khomeini personally agreed to a United Nations-brokered truce with Iraqi “infidels” in 1988. More recently, the government began borrowing money for development from European countries it once condemned, and the World Bank in Washington.

And in the middle are Kashani and much of the white-collar and privileged classes alienated by an authoritarian and self-righteous government that has evolved since 1979 and by the deteriorating conditions of life. For Kashani, that includes boredom, especially since the cultural clampdown in the early 1980s made everything from school curricula to television programs conform to the most conservative Islamic tenets. With limited public entertainment, Kashani used to spend his free time watching American and European movies rented on Tehran’s thriving but illicit video market. Recently, he took up the piano.

“I have to live my life, not a lot of fantasies,” he said.

Like every modern revolution, Iran’s attempted to accommodate the masses. Along the way, it instead alienated many Iranians, including its own supporters. “The revolution got sidetracked,” sighed a young professional woman named Batool who works in a government ministry and still wears the all-enveloping black chador, a symbol of Islamic modesty, out of personal preference. On previous trips to Tehran, I had never heard her complain. This time, she didn’t even need prodding.

“In the Shah’s time, the government misused people. Now, too, there’s injustice,” she explained, as we sat in her modern office in a downtown high-rise. “This government said it stood for equality, but now it has no program to make us equal. All the slogans, they’ve changed. Now, some are even the opposite of what they were 14 years ago.”

Batool paused to tuck strands of her silky black hair under her hejab, a scarf, a common preoccupation for women in public. (Hejab is also the generic term for modest Islamic dress.) Then she shrugged, “Maybe we expected too much.”

As disenchantment has deepened, the government has not sat idle: It launched what often appears to be a virtual counterrevolution. When it first came to power, the theocracy nationalized key industries and businesses. Today, it’s selling them off and reviving the Tehran Stock Exchange, which last year moved to a new downtown building of shiny brass, glass and white marble.

In its first phase, the regime called on women to have large families, to breed an Islamic generation. Today, it sponsors one of the most liberal birth control programs in the Third World, subsidizing everything from the pill and condoms to sterilization for both sexes.

And in its early years, the government imprisoned or executed those supportive of the Shah. Today, it’s dispatching emissaries to win their support and to persuade those who fled, particularly educated and wealthy Iranians in Southern California, to return.

The policy reversals reflect the core problem in the theocracy’s 15th year: The revolution is now facing a crisis of both focus and function. Since Khomeini died of a heart attack in 1989, the theocracy has been without an authoritative voice to provide guidance and legitimacy. And with the end of assorted conflicts, including the hostage crises in Tehran, 1979-’81, and Beirut, 1982-’91, and the Iran-Iraq war, 1980-’88, the regime no longer has a major external threat to mobilize internal support--or to blame for its own shortcomings. It’s also adjusting to a geopolitical upheaval with the breakup of the Soviet Union, the defeat of Iraq in Desert Storm and the Islamization of Afghanistan.

To get a sense of where the revolution is headed, I went to see Farhang Rejaei, an amiable Tehran political scientist and a University of Virginia graduate. Over the years, Rejaei has been one of my guides on the revolution’s progress. He is also one of the few Iranian analysts willing to be quoted.

“There’s a lot of questioning of the revolution right now, not only by the people. Leaders are asking questions too,” he said over a Chinese lunch. “It’s normal that all revolutionaries, whether Iranian or not, are full of idealism and revolutionism, with little grasp of reality. Over time, they learn that if they call on heaven, it just doesn’t work overnight. Gradually they learn that it’s only God who can say, ‘It shall be, and it is.’ ”

“The revolution is here to stay,” he added. “But the age of revolutionism has passed.”

ON THE DAY KHOMEINI RETURNED TO IRAN, CYRUS, THEN 16, WAS ONE of 50,000 volunteer marshals posted to protect the Imam from the estimated 3 million sobbing, shouting and otherwise frenzied Iranians who mobbed his motorcade on its 20-mile drive through the capital. Cyrus was posted at Behest-e Zahra, or Zahra’s paradise, the sprawling Tehran cemetery. To honor those who died in the uprisings against the Shah, the Imam ended his tumultuous homecoming at the graveyard, where he gave a speech pledging to form a new government that would take on the remnants of the Shah’s U.S.-backed regime--as well as the rest of the world--whatever the cost.

“Yes, I saw the Imam. He was only a few feet from me,” Cyrus recalled during this year’s anniversary. “It’s a day I’ll always remember. All Iranians remember where they were when the Imam came home.” Cyrus later joined the Basij, the zealous but crudely trained teen-age volunteers dispatched as human minesweepers during the war with Iraq, which by conservative estimates claimed more than 120,000 Iranians. The martyr’s section of Zahra’s paradise is now filled with Basij, who were main casualties in the war.

I met Cyrus while he was browsing at the Center for Publication of U.S. Espionage Den’s Documents. “Espionage Den” is the Iranian name for the American Embassy, and the center is a small corner shop at the former U.S. compound. It sells volumes of pieced-together diplomatic cables and reports that American diplomats shredded before they were taken hostage in 1979. They used to be bestsellers, but now the little bookshop is just a reminder, one of the few, of the theocracy’s first foreign crisis. Most of the students who seized the U.S. Embassy have either disappeared into obscurity or died. Large numbers volunteered for the Basij and were killed in the war; others who won government posts have since been purged or demoted for their militancy. Many of the revolution’s first leaders have now faded into history.

Cyrus, now 30, had no inhibitions about discussing his life since the revolution. After the war, he studied engineering at a technical college in Tehran, married a teacher and became a businessman. He represents what may be the second-largest stratum of Iranian society, staunch believers in the revolution’s ideals but not its performance.

“Religion and politics are not separable,” he said. “Whatever else happens, Islam will stay in our system. Life is incomplete without Islam. I’m what you in the West call a fundamentalist,” he added, probably because it’s no longer easy to distinguish the fanatically faithful by their dress. Revolutionary fashion, from fatigues to full beards, is now passe. Cyrus was dressed in a blue pin-striped shirt and tailored black leather jacket; his beard was neatly trimmed.

“I now work at a machinery factory that does business with Germany, Italy, Japan and others. When the Westerners realize that a fundamentalist can be a reasonable man, an ordinary man, a wise man, it is very surprising to them,” he continued, beaming as if he’d pulled a fast one on the outside world.

But Cyrus did concede that the theocracy has problems big enough to threaten his loyalty--and potentially even the revolution. “The prices! Everything is so expensive now,” he said, shaking his head over skyrocketing costs that have made Tehran one of the most expensive cities in the world. “I’m not sure we can afford the revolution anymore.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. After the Gulf War ended, Iranians hoped that sacrifice and food rationing would be replaced by reconstruction and prosperity. Five years later, gasoline is still only 10 cents a gallon, but the country’s standard of living has seriously eroded. Inflation, officially pegged at 30%, is now closer to 50%, according to economists in Tehran. Unemployment is officially figured at under 12%; unofficially, it’s at least 20%, with millions underemployed and even more holding down two or three jobs. After an Iran Air crash that killed 132 in February, Tehran’s press ran letters from readers blaming the economy--specifically conditions that forced air controllers to moonlight as cabdrivers to make ends meet.

Qods Department Store, a five-story building that is the Iranian equivalent of Woolworth’s, has always been a good barometer of Tehran’s economy. Barren during the war years, Qods’ shelves are now teeming with essentials as well as exotica. Bart Simpson has made it to Qods, as have the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. “The children loovvve these,” said the salesgirl as she put on a Simpson mask. At a stall of video games, a 12-year-old boy stood entranced. With a digital Ninja Turtle watch on his wrist and tennis shoes with lime green turtle laces on his feet, it was obvious which game he wanted. His mother volunteered, “The turtles are on his underwear, too.”

The toys, clothes, household goods and food at Qods are typical of Iranian tastes--quite worldly. They also reflect Iranian expectations.

The economic reality, however, is something else. Since the revolution, the population has doubled to nearly 60 million, while oil revenues--damaged by war and market forces--have been halved to around $17 billion. Along the way, the theocracy has also borne the devastating costs of the disastrous war with Iraq, punishing U.S.-led economic sanctions and the flight of billions of dollars in capital.

As part of its privatization, Iran is also now undergoing its own version of shock therapy. Since floating its artificially overvalued currency, the conversion rate for one U.S. dollar has plummeted from 70 rials to more than 1500 rials. The cost of almost everything has soared at the same time the average income has sunk to about $600 a year, less than half of what it was before the revolution. Most Iranian families cannot afford $1 for the Bart Simpson mask, much less the $22 and up for video games.

Perhaps most painful for the theocrats is the debt issue. In the 1980s, the regime liked to gloat that, despite economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation, it had paid off the $7.4-billion foreign debt accumulated by the Pahlavi dynasty. But in the 1990s, economic liberalization and privatization led to a multibillion-dollar foreign shopping binge, mainly for consumer goods. As a result, the theocracy faces a bigger debt in 1993 than the monarchy left behind in 1979.

The heart of Tehran, both physically and historically, is its Great Bazaar, arguably the best in the Middle East. A covered maze of dusty alleyways, glittering lights and spicy aromas stretched over six square miles, the bazaar is made up of thousands of large shops and hole-in-the-wall stalls.

The bazaaris --a term loosely applied to the entire merchant class, although its dominant component is in the Great Bazaar--are one of the three pillars of Iranian society. The other two are the military and the clergy. The political rule of thumb in Tehran is that a government needs support from all three to survive. The bazaaris’ decision to go on strike against the Shah was a turning point in his ouster.

Since Khomeini’s death, bazaaris ‘ relations with the theocracy have soured, and for many of the same reasons that they eventually abandoned the Shah. In a shop close to the bazaar’s main entrance, I asked a young jeweler named Ali about business. He rolled his eyes. “Money’s disappeared. Nobody has money to spend,” he said.

I pointed out that the bazaar was, as always, bustling. Clutches of women, wrapped in chadors , were peering in row after row of jewelry shops. Iranian jewelers normally thrive in hard times because gold is a form of savings.

“They’re just looking,” Ali said. “Everyone in Iran is just looking these days.” He put a sugar cube on his tongue and then, Iranian-style, drank a hot cup of tea that dissolved it.

I asked where the money had gone. He wound his finger several times around his head to indicate a mullah’s turban. “The clergy tries to keep itself clean. But you can’t do anything anymore without paying off this mullah’s son or that mullah’s brother-in-law--and these days usually both,” he said.

“I supported the revolution. Bazaaris are religious by tradition, and if there were no economic difficulties, this system would be good, very good. But the way things are now, we can’t go on. The cost is too high.”

ON THE DAY KHOMEINI returned to Iran, Masumeh Goolgeri was pregnant with her first child, so she couldn’t go out to welcome the Imam. “Although my heart was there,” she said in February. The boy born shortly thereafter died, but Goolgeri and her husband have since had another son and three daughters who are now growing up in a system that, she thinks, promises a better world.

Goolgeri, a plain woman with a stainless-steel Seiko watch showing beneath the sleeve of her chador , is now an instructor at Zahra’s Society, a theology center for women in the city of Qom.

“Before the revolution, women could be educated or we could be religious, but not the two together. Now we can be both,” Goolgeri explained as she sat on a rug sipping tea. “From the beginning of Islam, men and women are equal. But during the Shah, women were objects of passion, and men acted superior. Now we’re equal again. The revolution brought that back.”

Zahra’s Society, named after the Prophet Mohammed’s daughter, is a product of the revolution. During the monarchy, female students in Qom, a theological center more than 100 southwest of Tehran, had “adjunct” status in classes taught by men at male seminaries. Khomeini taught in Qom before the Shah expelled him. After he returned in 1979, the Imam commanded that women should have their own religious institutions--and be encouraged to teach as well as to learn. His instructions are still visible on colorful placards hung throughout the otherwise austere seminary. One pointedly reminds, “During the revolution, women were on the front lines.”

Goolgeri represents the third and probably smallest layer of Iranian society, those who are unwavering in their loyalty to the revolution, even its imperfections. “I couldn’t have dreamed of this kind of life during the monarchy,” she said.

“During the Shah’s rule, I had no real role in the system, no voice. Realistically, I had no hope of bettering my life, at least not significantly. And I had to take off my clothes to dress as the Shah’s sister dressed. If I didn’t, I couldn’t go to university or to many hotels. Do you call this freedom?”

Sitting with us was a young acolyte of scrubbed fresh beauty who was enthralled by this bit of history; she was barely out of her teens. With 46% of Iran’s population under 15, almost half the population has been born since the revolution. And well over half are of an age that they don’t remember the monarchy. The girl scribbled furiously in a large notebook as her instructor talked.

“The revolution did not impose religion on me. It opened up opportunities,” Goolgeri continued. “The hejab does not limit me. It frees me to be a person judged not by beauty but by actions and thoughts. My life has been much improved, and I think my three daughters will have real opportunities.”

It is often said in Tehran that whatever happens to the revolution’s political agenda or economic goals, its deepest impact will be on Iran’s social order. If that’s true, then the revolution’s legacy may be the deepest among women.

In Iran’s Islamic system, it takes two female witnesses to equal the testimony of one man in court. Women aren’t allowed to be judges. Except for support staff, the foreign service also has no female diplomats. And the only woman in the Iranian Cabinet, the wife of the vice president, was not appointed until last year, and then as a presidential adviser on women’s affairs. Women, in general, have little tangible power.

Then, of course, there’s the matter of hejab and the sillier sides of sexual segregation, notably separation on ski slopes and buses. Most women I’ve met over the years reject hejab as a nuisance, demeaning or antiquated. Last but not least are the penal codes for women--death by stoning for prostitution and multiple whippings for undue public familiarity with a man to whom a woman is not related.

Yet I’ve consistently been surprised by the number of women like Goolgeri who avidly support the revolution. And they’re not only at seminaries.

The relationship between gender and revolution struck me again at the anniversary’s most unusual feature, the Exhibition on the Prestige and Dignity of Women. Held at the circular and concrete-modern Museum of Contemporary Arts, it was a tribute in films and photographs to the talents of Iranian women.

I met Mariam Amoozegar, a cheerful and gregarious young woman, in front of the photos, one of which she had taken. Amoozegar clearly remembers the day Khomeini returned to Iran. It was her ninth birthday. At the time, she thought the Imam’s timing a good omen. Now a journalism student, she still does.

“I think I’m luckier than my mother was at my age,” she said, as we strolled around the exhibit. “I have a chance at more education and better jobs. Lots of women had jobs in the Shah’s time, but they were from one small class of people from one part of town. I probably wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now because I’m not from that group.

“I also think it’s a lot safer for women today. No man would dare try to rob me or harm me. Hejab protects me.”

Amoozegar also feels she has greater latitude in her personal life. Her grandmother married at the age of 9, her mother at 23, the same age Amoozegar turned during the 14th anniversary. “I’m in no hurry to marry,” she said. “I want to develop my photography first.”

Islamic Iran’s domestic policies have often been senselessly brutal and its tactics excessively crude, especially in the bloody early years: its human rights record remains abysmal. The intolerant zeal of the regime remains unchanged. It still stands accused of assassinating political foes abroad, condemning author Salman Rushdie to death and assorted other outrages. Some U.S. officials suspect an indirect Iranian role in the World Trade Center bombing, though no hard evidence has yet emerged.

But the revolution has opened up Iran’s political system after 2,500 years of both benevolent and despotic--but always authoritarian--monarchs and strongmen. With all men and women over the age of 15 now eligible to vote--and run--in local, provincial and national elections, millions have been empowered. In last year’s parliamentary election, 56 women ran in a contest for 270 seats; nine won. And several laws dealing with women’s rights have been introduced in recent years; among them is one now pending on mandatory day care facilities to accommodate working mothers. And late last year, Iran’s Parliament passed one of the world’s most innovative divorce laws; in settlements, women can now claim wages for years of housework, and they serve as assistant judges in family courts. Meanwhile, female volunteers are the backbone of Iran’s new birth control program, educating both men and women. Women anchor TV news shows and teach at universities. They’re in all the major professions.

WHATEVER ELSE IRAN’S ISLAMIC revolution might or might not provide its people, it has brought them a new and distinct identity. And identity is no small issue to the Persians, who historically have been an ethnic anomaly in both the Mideast and South Asia, the two regions they link. An Indo-European people, they do not have a larger community, like the Arab world, with which to identify. As proud and arrogant as they often seem, most Iranians think of themselves as vulnerable--and as a people distinctly apart from the rest of the world.

For the revolution’s faithful, the new identity has particular appeal. Unlike the identity developed by the two modernizing Pahlavi kings, it isn’t borrowed from abroad, but is indigenous and historically legitimate. It doesn’t involve alien customs or clothing, but familiar ways of conducting life. For women, Goolgeri said, it represents “opportunity without exploitation.”

I kept pushing Goolgeri on the revolution’s weaknesses. I couldn’t believe that, after 14 years, she wouldn’t concede some small hole in the Islamic system. I told her that even those of us who believe in democracies were prepared to admit that each has its flaws.

“If there are problems, it is because of human beings, not the system,” she replied, a smile on her face.

Didn’t she worry that she was in the minority? “If anyone outside this country tried to change our system, I think you’d be surprised at the reaction,” she said, the smile growing wider. “Besides,” she added, “how many people vote in your country?”

And finally, I pressed, what about the role of women in Islam, a religion even more historically dominated by men than either Christianity or Judaism?

“Now there are even some women on the path to becoming an ayatollah,”’ she responded, beaming in a way that let me know she wasn’t going to waver.

“This wouldn’t have been possible without the revolution.”