The Saturday Profile Freed by Revolution, He Speaks for Iran's Hard-Liners
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN TEHRAN
WHAT becomes of a man who at the age of 27 was sentenced to life in prison for his political views, whose toenails and fingernails were ripped out, whose teeth were kicked in, who was shocked with electricity and had the soles of his feet beaten?
What happens to him when his allies come to power and he is freed?
Hossein Shariatmadari, who lost his teeth to the boots of the shah's secret police, is today feared by many of his own countrymen. He has become the voice of hard-line Iran, not only hard-line, but also radical, secretive and uncompromising. He is the general director of Kayhan, a newspaper that offers insight into the most extreme views of Iran's leaders and into the mind-set and plans of those who are at the center of power.
He is short, with a graying beard and a humble demeanor. Few others operate with the impunity of Mr. Shariatmadari, whose official position is representative of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and who has ties to the intelligence services.
His words are almost always couched in the language of reason, insisting that he is not to be feared, that he simply follows the rules while others, namely reformers, do not. He does not like the word fundamentalist, preferring principle-ist. His goal, he says, is to nurture the system, a religious-based system that is almost 30 years old and still finding its way. "There are certain people still remaining who challenge the values," he said in his understated manner. "What I mean by 'challenge' are those people who make debates regarding the values of the system."
And who are those people?
Women who flaunt restrictions on dress, pushing their hijab, or head covering, way back, he says. Men who mock conformity with wild hairdos. Clerics who question the theological foundation of having a supreme leader. A father of the revolution, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who said in a book that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini wanted to stop using the phrase "Death to America."
It is all there in the pages of Kayhan, where Mr. Shariatmadari's often polite language can soften the edges of his blunt message. After explaining how Mr. Rafsanjani was wrong about Ayatollah Khomeini's wanting to drop the "Death to America" chant, for example, he wrote:
"Considering the sensitivity of these days, and people's clear understanding of Imam's views, such mistakes can be more harmful for Mr. Rafsanjani than the people."
KAYHAN has a long and distinguished reputation in Iran. It was first published in 1942, and became a voice of the revolution with hundreds of thousands of readers after the shah fell. Today, it has a circulation of about 70,000, with about 1,000 employees working in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. It also has an English edition.
Critics say he is nothing but a tool of the intelligence services. "The truth is, Kayhan is an intelligence newspaper," said Mahmoud Shamsolvaezin, a former editor of Kayhan, who left his job there when Mr. Shariatmadari took charge 15 years ago.
Mr. Shariatmadari, 58, has an office in downtown Tehran in a nondescript building that has the cold, impersonal feel of an old Soviet party office. He always stands to greet guests, always with a shy smile and slight tip of his head. His conference table is typically stocked with apples, figs, melons, whatever is in season. His coffee table is piled high with baked goods.
He is upfront about his role as an advocate for the Islamic Republic.
"I think it is the job of the media to shout," he said, his deep-set eyes giving a glimmer of mischief and delight.
Critics voice suspicions about Mr. Shariatmadari: that he has millions of dollars secreted abroad, that he owns a palace in Canada, that hit squads have been sent to kill him. But the most persistent rumor is that he was an interrogator for the intelligence service.
Mr. Shariatmadari said they were all baseless. He admitted that he was asked on occasion to speak with prisoners and added that he would gladly have been an interrogator.
"Of course, the fact that I wasn't an interrogator doesn't mean that I disapprove of the work of interrogators," he said. "I regretfully could not provide such service."
As a young man, Mr. Shariatmadari planned to be a doctor. He was studying medicine in Iran and working to help promote the ideas of Ayatollah Khomeini when he was arrested and sentenced to life for what were considered subversive activities, including contacting the ayatollah.
Then came the revolution, and he was freed.
His first stop was the Revolutionary Guards, where he served as a commander during the eight-year war with Iraq. Some early members have complained that the revolution went off track and that the leadership has come to reflect an image of the secular leadership under the shah — corrupt and mainly concerned with preserving power.
Mr. Shariatmadari disagrees. He does not see it as the oppressed becoming the oppressor. "If we were this police system, we wouldn't release people who make confessions, and if we were a police-type system we wouldn't allow these people to deny their confessions," he said.
FOR about an hour, Mr. Shariatmadari remained unfailingly polite and reserved. But his demeanor changed when he began to discuss his recent articles arguing that Bahrain was rightfully part of Iran. This is an especially volatile issue because it undermines the Iranian government's message to regional Arab leaders: that they have nothing to fear from a recently emboldened Iran or a nuclear Iran, and that Iran is no longer trying to export its revolutionary ideology.
Mr. Shariatmadari laughed at the dust-up he caused.
"These are countries that are not even 200 years old," he said, apparently referring to the entire Persian Gulf region, not just Bahrain. "These small countries where guys are drinkers, these playboy sheiks."
Words that sting rarely pass from his lips, unless he is talking about the United States or Israel. Then nothing is out of bounds, nothing politically incorrect.
"Regarding external risks, God has helped us a lot because our enemy Bush is stupid," he said in an interview last May with Asharq al- Awsat, a Saudi-owned newspaper. "His stupidity has helped us a great deal."
When the interview was over, Mr. Shariatmadari rose, shook hands, put his right hand over his heart as a sign for affection and sincerity and gave each of his guests a gift, a bag filled with copies of his newspaper.
"Some people ask, 'Why do you shout?' " he said. "I ask, 'Why don't you shout?' "
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