Moderate in Iran Appears to Lead Presidential Vote

TEHRAN —  In a major surprise to Iran’s conservative religious establishment, a moderate Islamic cleric surged toward victory today by a nearly 3-1 margin in the country’s first closely contested presidential election since the 1979 revolution.

In first returns announced by Iranian television this morning, former Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister Mohammad Khatami appeared almost certain to defeat Ali Akbar Nateq-Nuri, the anti-Western speaker of Iran’s parliament for the past eight years and a leader of traditional religious conservatism in the Islamic republic.

Khatami had 6,049,834 votes to Nateq-Nuri’s 2,449,316 votes, with two minor candidates netting less than 400,000 votes together. Nearly one-third of the vote had been counted; there are about 30 million eligible voters, and turnout was reported extremely heavy.

The result and high participation pointed to a large and emotional protest vote against Iran’s status quo, including years of double-digit inflation and tight strictures on what people may say, read and even wear.

Khatami was fired as culture minister in 1992 because he was considered too liberal by Nateq-Nuri’s rightist camp. In his campaign, he had called for allowing greater openness and tolerance while still clinging to the religious values that marked the Iranian revolution.

Based on journalists’ conversations with voters emerging from polls, Khatami had been the overwhelming favorite in greater Tehran, home to one-fifth of the country’s 60 million people. The early returns suggested that he was also doing well in the more conservative rural areas of the country, where illiterate voters often rely on clerics to fill in their ballots.

The early announcement of the apparent Khatami landslide also seemed to lay to rest fears that the result might be manipulated in favor of Nateq-Nuri.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, dismissed the possibility of vote manipulation and pledged to work closely with whomever the voters choose.

“Whoever gets voted in today, God willing . . . I will act toward him the same way I have done in the past years toward the president,” Khamenei told Tehran radio.

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There was almost a palpable sense of anticipation as voters queued in mosques and schools along buildings plastered with the posters of the candidates.

Khatami’s posters promised a “better tomorrow,” while many of Nateq-Nuri’s had been defaced, his eyes gouged out or painted over.

“The reason people are excited by Khatami is that he is both religious and intellectual,” said Mehdi Musavi, director of a trading company, before going in to cast his ballot in an affluent northern Tehran neighborhood where the grip of clerical rule has always been uneasy. “He is open-minded in politics, social life and the economy too.”

Even in the gritty industrial suburbs south of Tehran, once believed to be the heartland of the rightists who support Nateq-Nuri, a pro-Khatami mood was blooming.

“I am very happy, especially because I am sure that the person I voted for is going to win,” said Behan Rafie, an industrial engineer who joined the army because he could not find work.

Polling hours were extended from 6 until 10 p.m. in most places to accommodate the heavy turnout, but even so, people were lining up until the last minute. Interior Ministry officials said they hoped to have final results by late today.

The differing moods of the two main camps were obvious when their candidates voted in Tehran.

Khatami’s supporters mobbed him, cheering loudly, according to journalists present.

When Nateq-Nuri voted at another station, there were few supporters, and they were subdued.

The electorate appeared seized by a desire for change, both economically and in the freedom to speak openly, several analysts said.

“Per capita income in real terms is one-fourth what it was in the shah’s time, and people are really feeling the pinch,” an Asian diplomat said. “The level of dissidence is rising. People are speaking out.”

Nateq-Nuri is known as an ideologue, a fierce critic of the West and a strict enforcer of the Shiite Muslim clergy’s preeminent role in ruling.

Khatami, on the other hand, was removed after 10 years as culture minister in 1992 in response to complaints from conservatives that he was too liberal. In campaign speeches, he said he would allow “different views” if elected.

“Our people do not deserve to be poor and ignorant, not having the facilities of a developed country. Our backwardness is not due to natural resources or culture--we have both,” Khatami told supporters at his final rally Wednesday. “The problem is due to the lack of a correct, independent government.”

Besides Nateq-Nuri and Khatami, two others were on the ballot--Mohammad Mohammadi Reyshahri, a former interior minister, and Reza Zaverei, a judicial official.

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The incumbent, Hashemi Rafsanjani, is required to step down in August at the end of his second four-year term. He is to be chairman of a newly strengthened and expanded Expediency Council, the body that assists the supreme leader, and some believe that he will remain more powerful than whoever succeeds him as president.

In the past, Nateq-Nuri and the conservative parliament often blocked the pragmatic Rafsanjani when he attempted reforms.

If Khatami wins, a Rafsanjani-Khatami alliance could mean “real change,” said Dariush Mehrjouie, a prominent Iranian filmmaker.

Khamenei, however, has been stressing that no new president will be permitted to change Iran’s hostile stance toward the United States.