Iran’s new Government

Press, 30 August 1978, Page 22

Iran’s new Government

The resignation of the Prime Minister of Iran, Mr Jamshid Amouzegar, and his replacement by Mr Sjaafar Sharif-Emami and a new Cabinet, will serve several purposes. The most important of these appears to be the appeasement of certain religious leaders. The Shah will also hope that some of the resentment expressed against himself will be deflected. When he swore in the new Prime Minister he said that the “first priority of the new Government will be the principles of Islam” and Mr SharifEmami has wasted no time in closing casinos, banning gambling, abolishing a non-Islamic calendar, dropping a Minister for Women's Affairs from the Cabinet, and causing one of the Shah’s physicians, not a Shi’ite Muslim, to retire. Only the lifting of some curbs on newspapers and the emergence of political parties, which was the Shah’s idea, suggest liberalisation.

The Shah has forced the pace of development in Iran. His aim was to make Iran the fifth biggest Power in the world. It was all too much for some Muslim clergy’. In the town of Qom, the centre of religious conservatism, resentment against the changes in society was rife. Some Muslim clergy wanted women still to be veiled and sought the reintroduction of Islamic law. The rioting throughout Iran over the last few weeks seems mostly to have arisen from religious causes. The high number of

foreigners in Iran and the disruption they have brought to an Islamic society have been important contributing factors.

The religious opposition to the Shah is the most serious opposition he has, but it is not the only opposition. Like many another country Iran has its problems of country people moving to towns, caught by rapid changes and rapidly rising expectations. The conflicts produced are one source of the feeling against the Shah. Another important source is the aspirations of the liberals in Iranian society, resentful of the curbs on their freedom, resentful of the activities of Savak, the security service, and hopeful about their greater participation in the political process. The establishment of 14 political parties hours after the ban on political parties was lifted is evidence of these hopes.

The diverse origins of the opposition to the Shah probably means that his rule is not seriously threatened. Each of the groups maj’ embrace a philosophy of human rights to attack the Shah, but Iran’s liberals would not be convinced about the dedication to human rights of people w’ho wanted to put Muslim women back into veils. At the moment the religious conservatives are being wooed by the new Government. Yet is will not be as easy to turn the clock back as it was to abandon the non-Islamic calendar.