TEHRAN: Blocking a major reform by the new Parliament and infuriating some members, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei, on Sunday killed a bill that would have revived banned progressive newspapers.
Angry moderates and members of the conservative minority — supporters of the supreme leader — then began scuffling on the floor of the Parliament for several minutes before order was restored.
Bypassing Parliament, elected in February, Ayatollah Khamenei used his extra-legislative powers to intervene. He issued a letter that was read aloud to the 290 Parliament members.
"If the enemies infiltrate the press, this will be a big danger to the country's security and the people's religious beliefs. I do not deem it right to keep silent," the ayatollah's letter said. "The bill is not legitimate and not in the interest of the system and the revolution."
The microphones carrying the comments of protesting deputies were apparently switched off, although live coverage of the session on state radio and television continued.
Deputies had scheduled a debate and votes on amendments to a press law that was passed in the last days of the outgoing, conservative legislature. Passage was virtually assured.
But the last-minute intervention of Ayatollah Khamenei, who has final say in key matters of state, forced an indefinite suspension of the matter amid shouted protests and scuffles on the floor of the chamber.
Some Parliament members voiced outrage and threatened to resign. Others said they planned to write to Ayatollah Khamenei in protest. Analysts said they believed that the ayatollah had taken the action in order to kill efforts to revive a free press, which conservatives consider a major threat.
It was the press that had become the voice and power behind the reform movement. Ayatollah Khamenei, in a major speech in April, said that some newspapers had become "bases of the enemy."
For this reason, conservatives in the judiciary closed several publications, beginning in April, and imprisoned at least half a dozen newspaper editors and prominent commentators. Some received up to five years in prison; others were released on bail but banned from future press activity.
Under the proposed legislation, publishers, not individual journalists, would be responsible for the material published.
Moderate Parliament members knew that the extent of their power remained uncertain.
Even if they had rallied a majority to approve the bill, the legislation could still be vetoed by the Guardian Council, a body of conservative clerics and jurists who are charged with deciding if legislation conforms with Islamic law. The council often uses this power as a cover to veto legislation it disagrees with for political reasons.
Mohammed Reza Khatami, deputy speaker of Parliament and the head of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the moderates' largest faction, which functions like a political party, last week acknowledged the movement's limitations.
Mr. Khatami, the brother of President Mohammed Khatami, said the new members of Parliament should lower their expectations for change.
President Khatami, in a speech on July 29 in which he announced he would run for re-election next May, warned of dictatorial tendencies.
"The reform we propose is against dictatorship," he said, noting that Iranians had shown their approval for reform in the course of the elections. "As long as this is the people's vote, this will form the basis" of government actions, he said.
But Iran's constitution does not grant supreme rights to the people. The Parliament speaker, Mehdi Karroubi, a senior cleric approved by Ayatollah Khamenei to lead Parliament against the wishes of moderates, reminded members of the limitations of democratic rule.
"Our constitution has the elements of the absolute rule of the supreme clerical leader, and you all know this and approve of this," he said. "We are all duty-bound to abide by it," he warned Parliament.
Trying to counter the gains moderates have made through the ballot box in city council and parliamentary elections, conservatives have asserted their power in the judiciary and law enforcement — the institutions they dominate.
The judiciary, in fact, has become the major battleground. Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi, the judiciary chief appointed last year, vowed to bring about vast reforms whereby judges would be compelled to issue verdicts based on legal, not political, considerations. But since last year, he has waffled on his commitment, and many major court rulings have suggested that politics still rules the bench.
Informed sources said dissension had emerged within the ranks of the judiciary and that some judges recently had sent a letter to the judiciary chief demanding that he force conservative colleagues to comply with the law.
