Khomeini granddaughter leads reform effort

By Lee Keath and Ali Akbar Dareini

Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran - She is a granddaughter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the 1979 Islamic revolution, but Zahra Eshraghi has long been a leader of reformers seeking to liberalize Iran.

She sees dark days for Iran, at least in the short run, given the hard-liners' lock on power. To break that hold, she says, former reformist President Mohammad Khatami must run against hard-line leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad next year.

"The only way to save the country is for Khatami to run next year in presidential elections," Eshraghi told the Associated Press in an interview conducted in Farsi. "He is the only one who will defeat Ahmadinejad."

She spoke against the backdrop of tomorrow's parliamentary elections, which Ahmadinejad allies and other conservatives are expected to win, maintaining their hold on the legislature. Reformists are crippled because most of their candidates were among the 1,700 disqualified by Iran's clerical leadership.

Khatami has said he has no desire to return to the presidency, which he held from 1997 to 2005. But he remains the most charismatic figure of the reform movement and is under pressure to run.

In recent months, he has stumped for little-known reform candidates, giving speeches that have drawn thousands in a campaign that otherwise has been met with apathy.

To Westerners, Eshraghi may seem an unusual figure to be in the reform movement's ranks. Her grandfather brought the idea of rule by Islamic clerics into reality in Iran with the popular uprising that chased out the shah in 1979.

In the system that has evolved, the powers of unelected clerics, headed by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, trump those of Iran's elected government. They can overrule laws and bar from elections any candidate deemed insufficiently adhering to the Islamic republic system.

Ahmadinejad allies and other conservatives are running in the election under the title of Usulgerayan - Farsi for principlists - touting their loyalty to Khomeini's revolution.

Eshraghi, who did not seek to be a candidate, argues that religious hard-liners have hijacked the revolution, which she says was meant to bring freedom to Iran. "This is totally against the goals of the revolution and contrary to the views of Imam Khomeini," she said. ". . . With this trend, nothing remains of the republic. And they have left nothing of freedom."

Because of the wide disqualifications of candidates, "I don't think there will be even a powerful minority bloc of reformists in the next parliament," said Eshraghi, who is married to Khatami's younger brother, Mohammad Reza, himself a reformist leader.

Despite her gloom, Eshraghi predicts the hard-liners will fail in the long term. "In this era of communications and flow of information, the young generation won't accept that a few hard-liners decide their fate," she said.

Khatami was swept into the presidency by a landslide in 1997 elections. Three years later, reform candidates swept elections to take over parliament, and the president's younger brother, Eshragi's husband, became deputy parliament speaker.

It was a brief heyday for the reformers. They were able to bring a more liberal atmosphere, loosening Islamic restrictions on women's dress, music, and other social activities.

But hard-liners, backed by the clerical leadership, blocked concrete political change. In 2004, most reformist lawmakers were barred from running for reelection, and hard-liners took over the legislature. A year later, Khatami had to step down as president because he had served the limit of two consecutive terms, and Ahmadinejad won the presidential vote.
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By ELAINE SCIOLINO

TEHRAN — When it comes to credentials in Iran's Islamic Republic, Zahra
Eshraghi's are cast in gold.


Her grandfather was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the cleric who
overthrew a king and led a revolution in the name of Islam. Her
husband's brother is the reformist president, Mohammad Khatami. And her
husband, Mohammad Reza Khatami, is the head of the reformist wing of
Parliament. -


In a society where women can derive enormous power from the men in their
lives, those three pillars give Ms. Eshraghi enormous standing. Yet the
39-year-old government official and mother of two has a confession to
make. She feels trapped by her family history. And she hates wearing the
black veil known as the chador.


"I'm sorry to say that the chador was forced on women," she said over
tea and cakes in her upscale apartment decorated in ornate furniture in
northern Tehran. "Forced — in government buildings, in the school my
daughter attends. This garment that was traditional Iranian dress was
turned into a symbol of revolution. People have lost their respect for
it. I only wear it because of my family status."


Those are the words of a rebel. Ayatollah Khomeini called the chador the
"the flag of the revolution," and early in the revolution of 1979
encouraged all women to wear it. Eventually, all women were forced to
wear garments that cover their heads and hide the shape of their bodies.


Ms. Eshraghi's frankness is emblematic of the changes today in Iran,
where the values and promises of the revolution have given way to an
intense, even dangerous debate about whether religion has a place in
politics and society.


As a member of the ayatollah's family, Ms. Eshraghi is expected to
embrace the trappings of the revolution and the Islamic Republic that
followed. Nothing symbolizes the revolution more than the ankle-length
black chador that covers all but a woman's face.

But the attitude toward the chador in Iran today has become so negative
that some merchants — particularly in northern Tehran, which is more
secular, Westernized and wealthy than the rest of the city — refuse to
serve "chadori," as chador-wearing women are called. Chadori who do not
want to expose themselves to insults avoid the new food court in Tehran
that serves tacos and pizza but no traditional Persian food.

"I was in a shop, and I wanted to buy a pair of pants, and the owner
wouldn't sell them to me because I was in a chador," Ms. Eshraghi said.
"We have only ourselves to blame. People are not happy with the
establishment, and the chador has become its symbol."

Pale-eyed, with perfectly manicured eyebrows and slightly frosted hair,
Ms. Eshraghi said she had always covered her hair in public — at least
with a scarf — because of the dictates of Islam. She fought colleagues
at the Interior Ministry, where she promotes women's issues, when they
tried to force her to wear more modest dress and dark colors underneath
her chador. Behind closed doors, she wears fitted pantsuits that do not
conceal her full figure.

"I told them it was not anybody's business what I wear under the
chador,"

she said.


Asked if she would ever want to throw off the head scarf in public, she
asked, "Do you want to issue me my death sentence?"


Just as remarkable is Ms. Eshraghi's willingness to share her feelings
with someone outside the family. Iran is a society with high walls
between public and private life, walls that are even more impenetrable
among the clerical class. "I am sitting here, and I feel I cannot be
myself," she said. "It's not the true me. I have to wear a mask."


Her husband, by contrast, a medical doctor by training and one of the
most visible politicians in the country, declined to be interviewed.


She recalled a favorite song, a pre-revolutionary ballad (banned after
the revolution) in which a singer laments the fact that people have to
hide behind masks. "I used to play that song over and over because it
seemed like my life story," she said.


No matter that her grandfather condemned music shortly after the
revolution as "no different from opium" because it "stupefies persons
listening to it and makes their brains inactive and frivolous."


"I still sometimes sing at home and dance," Ms. Eshraghi said. "I can't
kill those feelings."

Most of Ms. Eshraghi's life has revolved around the Islamic revolution.
When Ayatollah Khomeini settled in a suburb of Paris before returning
victorious to Iran to make his revolution, she was brought along at age
14. Four years later, she married a medical student four years her
senior whose father was a famous ayatollah who was well acquainted with
her family.

Her family did not allow her to study her favorite subjects, music and
painting, in college. So she turned to philosophy instead. Even then, it
did not please the ayatollah, who told her philosophy was a subject that
had to be studied all one's life and was therefore too difficult for
her. "There was always a lot of pressure on me," she said. "I lost a lot
of my youth."


When Mr. Khatami, then a relatively unknown mid-level cleric who ran the
national library, first ran for president in 1997 on a platform of
reform, she opened a campaign headquarters for him.


Now she has abandoned hope that the political reformers will defeat
conservative clerics who want to keep a rigid political system in the
name of Islam. In a blunt criticism of her brother-in-law, she said, "I
feel President Khatami's speed has been like that of a turtle."

She longs for a more peaceful life, without politics. "I used to think
we could change the situation, but now I have come to the conclusion
that only one set of beliefs can rule," she said.

"I feel haunted that
our phones are tapped, our rooms are tapped. I have spent my life in
political wars. Now I count the days when my husband leaves politics."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/02/international/middleeast/02IRAN.htm

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زهرا اشراقی، نوه حضرت امام خمینی:
شرایط فعلی باعث شرمندگی بنده به عنوان نوه ایشان شده است

صدایی عجیب از ایران
از نگاه اشراقی حتی اقلیت قدرتمندی هم در مجلس شکل نمی گیرد. از نگاه وی تنها راه نجات کشور این است که خاتمی رئیس جمهور شود. برای غربی ها، اینکه اشراقی از سران اصلاحات باشد عجیب به نظر می رسد. پدر بزرگ وی، ایده حکومت اسلامی را پس از شاه منفور به ایران آورد.
روزنامه فیلادلفیا اینکوایرر، گزارشی از نوه امام (ره) منتشر کرده است.

به گزارش سرویس بین الملل «فردا»، این روزنامه آمریکایی می نویسد:« وی نوه دختری آیت الله روح الله خمینی، بنیان گذار انقلاب ایران است، اما زهرا اشراقی مدتی است که رهبری اصلاحات در ایران را بر عهده گرفته است.»

وی می گوید سید محمد خاتمی باید بار دیگر در انتخابات سال آینده با محمود احمدی نژاد برای ریاست جمهوری رقابت کند.

از نگاه اشراقی تنها راه نجات کشور این است که خاتمی رئیس جمهور شود.

وی در آستانه انتخاباتی سخن می گوید که انتظار می رود یاران احمدی نژاد و دیگر اصول گرایان پیروز شوند و قدرت مجلس را در اختیار نگه دارند.

خاتمی گفته است که هیچ علاقه ای به بازگشت به ریاست جمهوری که از سال 1997 تا 2005 در آن مسند بوده است ندارد ؛ اما وی هنوز جذاب ترین چهره جنبش اصلاحات است و تمایل زیادی به وی می باشد.

در ماه های اخیر، وی برای کاندیداهای کمتر شناخته شده اصلاحات پا پیش گذاشت و سخنرانی هایی انجام داد و هزاران نفر را جذب خود کرد.

برای غربی ها، اینکه اشراقی از سران اصلاحات باشد عجیب به نظر می رسد. پدر بزرگ وی، ایده حکومت اسلامی را پس از شاه منفور به ایران آورد.

یاران احمدی نژاد و دیگر اصول گرایان در انتخابات با ابراز وفاداری به انقلاب امام خمینی وارد رقابت شده اند.

اشراقی می گوید هدف انقلابی دست یابی به آزادی بود:« این کاملا در تضاد با اهداف و آرمانهای امام است، با این روش، چیزی از جمهوریت نظام نمی ماند.»

اشراقی که همسر رضا خاتمی، از رهبران اصلاحات است می گوید: «به نظر من، حتی اقلیت قدرتمندی هم در مجلس شکل نمی گیرد


نوه امام (ره) عدم شناسایی برخی از دستگیر شدگان در راهپیمایی‌های خیابانی را از مهمترین دغدغه‌ها دانست و از مسئولان قضایی و امنیتی کشور خواست افرادی را که در بازداشتگاها نگه داری می شوند را شناسایی کرده و نگرانی خانوادها را رفع کنند.


به گزارش سحام نیوز زهرا اشراقی، نوه بنیانگذار انقلاب اسلامی در گفتگو با خبرنگار ما گفت: به عنوان عضوی از خانواده امام (ره) شرمنده فعالان سیاسی و یاران همیشگی امام (ره) و خط مشی ایشان هستم که امروز در مسند اتهام براندازی نظام قرار گرفته‌‌اند.

زهرا اشراقی با اشاره به قضاوت افکار عمومی اظهار داشت: خوشبختانه همه اقشار مردم بر آنچه به فعالان سیاسی و مبارزین انقلاب گذشته واقف هستند.

وی تصریح کرد: دادگاه مذکور نمایشی است که روز به روز اعتماد مردم را به حکومت کاهش داده و سلب می‌کند.

اشراقی تصریح کرد: اکثر زندانیان سیاسی که امروز در دادگاه محاکمه می‌شوند از یاران نزدیک و وفاداران و پشتوانه‌های امام در پیروزی انقلاب اسلامی بودند که همین امر موجب شد شرمندگی بنده به عنوان نوه ایشان شده است.

این فعال سیاسی با بیان اینکه به گفته امام (ره) نظام و ابسته به فرد نیست، اظهار داشت: افرادی که خود از پایه گذاران و مبارزان انقلاب و نظام جمهوری اسلامی ایران بوده‌اند، امروز به خود نظام خیانت نمی‌کنند.

نوه امام (ره) عدم شناسایی برخی از دستگیر شدگان در راهپیمایی‌های خیابانی را از مهمترین دغدغه‌ها دانست و از مسئولان قضایی و امنیتی کشور خواست افرادی را که در بازداشتگاها نگه داری می شوند را شناسایی کرده و نگرانی خانوادها را رفع کنند.

این فعال سیاسی همچنین خطاب به رئیس قوه قضاییه گفت: سلب مسئولیت بزرگترین اشتباه است، ارزنده است در روزهای آخر فعالیت خود در این سمت به میدان آمده و با به اتمام رساندن پرونده دستگیر شدگان حوادث اخیر، با خرسندی از سمت خود خداحافظی کنید.
نوه امام (ره) برگذاری چنین دادگاهی را در تاریخ انقلاب بی‌سابقه دانست و از فرزندان شهیدانی همچون شهید مطهری و بهشتی که امروز خود دارای جایگاه اجتماعی در بین مردم و مسئولان هستند، خواست فعالیت خود را بیشتر کنند و از موقعیت فعلی در جهت بهتر شدن فضای کنونی کشور استفاده کنند.