Iran's elections, scheduled for February 20, have provoked the gravest political crisis in that country in twenty years. The conservative, clerical Guardian Council sparked the turmoil in January by barring nearly half of the roughly 8,000 candidates for various national and local posts from running. A majority of those excluded were from the reformist camp associated with President Mohammad Khatami, including eighty-three sitting members of Parliament. Outraged members staged a sit-in, and when that failed, about a third of them resigned.

Khatami, famed for refusing to confront the hard-liners, at first pleaded with Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei to intervene. Only a few hundred reformists were reinstated, however. At first Khatami seemed prepared to postpone the elections, but when Khamenei denounced this plan, Khatami folded. It may not matter. Some observers felt that the reformists were likely to do poorly even had they not been barred. In last year's Tehran election, turnout was low because the bright hopes of the late 1990s for significant cultural and social change have faded. Conservative candidates were returned by a handful of voters.

Khatami and his team are determined to work within the system. The party closest to him has even refused to join a boycott of the elections. Many in his generation were scarred by the violent struggles of 1978-83, in which thousands died. For this reason, they refuse to go to the streets or to provoke a decisive split in the ruling class. Their weapons so far have been speeches, appeals, sit-ins, resignations and the occasional hunger strike. That these can be effective in Iran's "moral economy" was implicitly recognized when hard-liners threatened those who resigned with prosecution.

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