Iranians Find Art, Films to Display Their Discontents, The New York Times, June 8

… The mullahs who orchestrated the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran labeled the United States the Great Satan and, seeing Hollywood as one of his instruments, banned the import of Western movies…

Although Iran's government-controlled distributors are generally eager to showcase Iranian films abroad, they will not allow the release of films banned domestically…

But for the moment in Iran, each film is reviewed at five different points by censors. First, the script must be approved; then the roster of actors. After a film is completed, the censors decide whether it will gain a place in the annual film festival where new works are introduced, whether it will be released in Iran and then whether it will be shown abroad…

Tourism under Mullahs, The New York Times, June 8

SHIRAZ, Iran -- … Many of the [tourists] sites that were jammed with foreign tourists in pre-revolutionary days are now almost empty, with only occasional groups of European and Japanese tourists mixing with the local residents. This is due in part to the discomfort many foreigners still feel toward Iran, which is viewed in many quarters as a rogue state, and in part to the government's ambivalent attitude toward tourism.

Some officials here see tourism as an ideal way to earn hard currency and expose foreigners to a gentler side of Iran. But radicals believe that it opens the country to corrupting Western influences, gives hostile intelligence services an opportunity for espionage, and emphasizes aspects of pre-Islamic Persian history toward which they are less than enthusiastic….

Excerpts from an article by Sarvnaz Chitsaz, is the U.S. representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

The election of Ayatollah Mohammad Khatami as the Iranian regime's new president has once again raised the hopes of those Iran pundits who never abandoned their search for "moderate" elements in the regime.

But a quick look at the nature of the Iranian election - and the so-called moderate it brought to power - reveals this search as wishful thinking.

In a country where no genuine opposition is tolerated, the term election does not mean much. All the candidates had to be approved by the Council of Guardians, an elite clique of fundamentalist clerics. Every candidate approved had impeccable credentials, having served in high posts in the Iranian regime.

The hapless Iranian voter was reduced to choosing between a fanatical fundamentalist, a really fanatical fundamentalist and a really, really fanatical fundamentalist.

   Under the theocratic dictatorship ruling Iran, an election essentially determines how the spoils of power will be divided among the ruling mullahs.

In a round-table discussion reported by Ressalat newspaper on July 7, 1991, Khatami made a strong case for a more decisive policy of exporting the revolution: "Where do we look in drawing up our strategy? To expanding and extending the revolution, or to preserving the country? We must definitely focus on extension and expansion."

In his first press conference on May 27, Khatami showed that despite the ballyhoo raised by some Western media, he does not intend nor is he capable of deviating from the main framework of the clerical legacy. Losing no opportunity to praise Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is the regime's supreme leader, Khatami repeatedly affirmed that he is first and foremost obedient to his orders. Khatami reiterated that the clerics will continue to oppose the peace process in the Middle East….

The real story of Iran's election is what it reveals about the regime's weakness and isolation. Its internal balance has significantly shifted against Khamenei… Observers everywhere are calling the vote "a warning to those in power," "a vote against today's Iran," "a no vote," and "a protest vote," even from within the regime….

Maryam Rajavi has come to symbolize the antithesis to the mullahs' fundamentalism since the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the Resistance's parliament-in-exile, elected her in 1993 as president for the transitional period. Last June, she set off alarm bells in Tehran when she was welcomed by 25,000 Iranians in London, the largest gathering of Iranians abroad to date.

That support is also reflected in the steadily increasing stream of young recruits to the Resistance's armed wing, the National Liberation Army of Iran, on the Iran-Iraq border.

For this new generation of Iranians, the mullahs' elections signify only the bankruptcy of the regime. Despite the pretense that Khatami enjoys the support of the youth of Iran, it is to Maryam Rajavi, and not this mullah, that they look for change.

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