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By Newsweek Editors
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It's tempting to conclude that the fire has gone out of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution. In Teheran, peeling slogans have been scrubbed off the walls and replaced with ads for Japanese video players. A capitalist-style stock market is booming, children snap up Ninja Turtle toys and "Dances With Wolves" is the first Hollywood movie to be legally screened in years. "Teheran Spring" arrived in earnest last week with word that Iranian voters had turned out the fundamentalist zealots who long held the nation's Parliament, or Majlis. They elected the first truly postrevolutionary Parliament, reformers intent on steering the country out of its international isolation and economic chaos.
But the darker side of Khomeini's legacy may yet triumph. Iran remains a joyless place where religious vigilantes still periodically enforce conformity; nearly 1,000 people were executed last year. President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani may be called a moderate, but that's a relative term. "He's a pragmatist in some areas but an extremist in others," said one European observer. Iranian officials insist that Rafsanjani will focus on reconstructing his country. But Washington fears that he may still plan to build a nuclear bomb dominate the gulf, use terrorism and export revolution to the emerging Islamic states of Central Asia.
Most troubling are growing signs of Iran's nuclear ambitions. Sources in Teheran told NEWSWEEK that Iran is shopping abroad for nuclear supplies and has recruited several Soviet nuclear scientists to its research-and-development effort. Washington recently blocked Argentina's sale of material that could be used to make nuclear weapons. Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati insists the nuclear program is for "purely peaceful purposes." But Iraq has proven how easy it can be to hide a fullblown bomb-building effort.
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There's nothing secret about Iran's efforts to rebuild its conventional forces. It recently has dipped into a $2 billion arms budget to buy 25 Soviet MiG-29 fighters and three "K "class diesel submarines that could threaten Indian Ocean shipping. It is working with North Korea to develop a Scud missile with a 500-mile range. Analysts say constructing a credible war machine will take at least five years. And Iran is no match for such potential rivals as Pakistan and Russia. Still, Teheran likes to show off. Iranian jets recently bombed military bases of an opposition group deep in Iraq; amphibious-landing exercises have unsettled the gulf emirates.
Can Iran grab influence to the north, in the former Soviet Asian republics? Doubtful. Most of the 50 million Muslims there are Sunnis who reject Iran's Shia-inspired revolution. Iran has signed a series of economic and cultural agreements with the republics, but these amount to "worthless pieces of paper, " said a senior Turkish official. Iran apparently seeks mainly to protect its borders from potential unrest-and to reap a hefty commercial reward. A plan announced last week to upgrade rail links between the Caspian Sea and the gulf would make Iran the region's transportation hub.
Such ambitious schemes will fall flat unless Rafsanjani can truly take control at home. Some analysts fear that radicals unseated in the election could mount a terror campaign against both their own government and Western targets. Others say that the country could splinter into ethnic enclaves unless the government tames rampant corruption, unemployment and inflation. The economy shows some signs of improvement, but ordinary Iranians can barely cope. "We grow these apples, but I can't afford one for my family," said a cobbler shop, ping in southern Teheran, pointing to a mound of shiny fruit. Whatever Rafsanjani's larger ambitions are, the fate of Iran's 13-year-old revolution now clearly hinges on apples and oranges-not on how many nuclear bombs he can build or how many tanks he can buy.
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