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July 3, 2002 8:45 a.m. The Iranian Time Bomb A nation on the brink.

ran hurtles toward chaos, and we are still dithering. July 9 will mark the third anniversary of the student uprising at Tehran University, and the capital is girding for new demonstrations against the increasingly unpopular and insecure regime of Ayatollah Khamenei. Two recent polls suffice to demonstrate the hatred of the Iranian people for their leaders, whether "hardline" or "reformist." The first, a secret survey carried out by the Interior Ministry for the ruling mullahs, found that only six percent of 16,000 people in Tehran said they were satisfied with the regime; the other 94 percent said they were unhappy with it. Moreover, nearly half of those polled — 45 percent — said it was impossible to reform the system and must be totally changed. In thinking about these striking numbers — as clear a picture of failure as any regime could dream of — it must be remembered that, if anything, the numbers understate the discontent of the people, since a number of them must have believed that the pollsters were really agents of the state, and that anyone who denounced the regime was liable to be arrested and tortured.

Similar results were found by the pro-reformist newspaper No Rooz, which, according to the BBC Persian Service, found that more than half the people want President Khatami to discuss his obvious failures with them.

This is likely to be a very short discussion, since the hardliners have informed parliament and Khatami himself that henceforth all decisions will be made by instruments of the regime and not by the government. This fully confirms President Bush's description of Iran as a country where an unelected few hold all the power, while the elected government is impotent.

No wonder the regime is nervous, and signs of its insecurity mount with every passing day. For one thing, new instruments of repression have been created, most recently a new police force, dubbed the "Law Enforcement Forces." Under the direct control of the tyrant Khamenei, these thugs are randomly cracking down on "depraved" (that is, thoroughly normal) young people guilty of such sinful behavior as listening to Western music, dancing together, drinking alcohol or, in the case of women, failure to wear appropriately Islamic garb. A top official of the new police proudly announced "Our patrols are spread across the city to reestablish social order and to fight against all forms of depravity."

Human-rights lawyers are protesting that the morals police is utterly illegal, and that hundreds of young people have been arrested without proper warrants, but to no avail; the repression increases. The fact that the regime had to create a new police force tells us a lot about the mullahs' lack of self-confidence (a proper tyrant would have used the traditional instruments), and indeed recent reports from Tehran suggest that the regime has brought thousands of foreigners to the capital to fight against the anticipated July 9demonstrations. According to these sources, which have been very reliable in the past, large numbers of Palestinians and Iraqis have been brought to Tehran, and are undergoing paramilitary training. This is reminiscent of the brutal Chinese crackdown of 1991, in which military forces from the provinces were brought to Beijing to put down the uprising.

And in Washington…silence, as the appeasers in the Department of State ponder their next round of secret contacts with the regime. They do this despite the president's luminously clear statements that we are at war with tyrannical terror sponsors, and despite State's own repeated finding that Iran is the world's leading sponsor of terrorism. That they continue to sabotage the president's policy is a real problem, and no doubt it is only a matter of time before the president lays down the law to them, but delay is bad for us and confusion undermines our power.

In part, the ability of top State officials to explain away President Bush's explicit calls for consistent and coherent attacks on the terror masters comes from the tireless efforts of the National Security Council staff to reconcile the contrasting positions of key Cabinet officers. The role of the NSC is a matter of style, and each president finds one that suits him. Under Reagan, for example, when Cabinet secretaries disagreed, the NSC brought the disagreements to the president so that he could choose between them. Dubya's NSC strains mightily to find compromise positions acceptable to all the contending parties. It is a laudable ambition, and may even be achieved, provided there is enough time. But I don't think it's the right approach for a war Cabinet, where the definition of the national mission is so important, for both our own fighters and the enemy. There is enough fog in war under the best circumstances; we don't need to add to it by permitting the president's advisers to niggle with him in public and subvert the mission in private. If, as I believe, the regime in Iran is hateful to our president, then Rice, Powell and Rumsfeld should be saying so on every suitable occasion.

The dithering over Iran has already had at least two unfortunate consequences for the long-suffering Afghans. First, the king has no role at all, even a modest symbolic function. This was a big favor to the Iranian regime, which desperately feared the emergence of a stable and successful Afghanistan with a beloved shah playing a public role. They obviously dreaded the prospect that the model might appeal to their own downtrodden masses.

Second, somehow we and President Karzai permitted the new government to be called the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and thus for Islamic law to be the basis of society. At a single stroke, the Iranian model was transferred to Kabul, half the country (the women) were deprived of full human and civil rights, and all hopes for a flourishing democracy were, at best, postponed. I suspect we and the Afghans will pay an enormous price for this diplomatic disaster.

The best hope for Afghanistan is a speedy democratic revolution in Iran, and we can all hope that between now and the 9th of July our leaders will put the United States solidly behind the just cause of the Iranian people.

Faster, please.