How Iran's reformers lost their political way

When asked about rumors of installing curtains on sidewalks to separate men from women, Mr. Kalhor scoffed, saying that Ahmadinejad "wants everyone to be joyful," and that his efforts aim to "prevent the government from interfering in private lives."

Press clampdowns were over, Kalhor promised. He endorsed freedom of live music - which has been tightly controlled - and the return to Iran of singers and actors who play now-illegal music from exile. Satellite dishes - also illegal - are "inseparable from people's lives," he said, and women are "free to choose their dress."

But Kalhor retreated later, saying, "these are not the words of the president," even as a hard-line parliamentarian called for a "cultural revolution" to counter greater openness, and said the president should crack down on "badly veiled" women wearing "unIslamic and immoral cloth."

Ebadi is in a good position to test any change, if it comes. Her image and voice have been banned from TV for two decades. When she won the Nobel Prize, state-run TV ignored it until mounting complaints led to a brief mention 24 hours later, in an 11 p.m. broadcast. Hard-liners criticized her for shaking the hand of the man who gave her the Nobel prize.

People may need bread before freedom, Ebadi says, but one can help gain the other. "The reformists did not forget [the economy], but they had no power," she adds, adjusting her multicolored head scarf. "They cared about freedom of speech very much, and if there is enough of it, you can reveal the economic problems and corruption - so the bread will come."

Student militants who seized the American Embassy here in 1979 - prompting more than a quarter-century of enmity between the US and Iran - Thursday denied that hard-line President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad played any role in the takeover.

"I did not see him there," Abbas Abdi, one of the student leaders who plotted the embassy seizure, told the Monitor. "I have nothing else to say."

Mr. Abdi's denial echoed that of two other leading figures in the saga Thursday, who said that Mr. Ahmadinejad was not among those who captured 52 American hostages, and held them for 444 days.

"I deny such reports. Ahmadinejad was not a member of the radical student group that seized the embassy," former ringleader and recent parliamentarian Mohsen Mirdamadi told Reuters.

All three men have since become reformists who have sometimes been imprisoned for their beliefs. Their views contrast sharply with those of Mr. Ahmadinejad, and Iranian analysts say there is little reason that such a role would not already have been well known. But he may well have been in the compound numerous times, as were other revolutionary students at the time.

Still, the images of his election victory have stirred memories in several former US hostages."This is the guy," former hostage Charles Scott, a retired US Army colonel, told the Associated Press. "There is not question about it. You could make him blond and shave his whiskers, put him in a zoot suit and I'd still spot him." He told The Washington Times that Ahmadinejad "was one of the top two or three leaders."

The AP quoted four other former hostages who concluded that they recognized Ahmadinejad. But it also noted that a fifth former hostage, Air Force Col. Thomas Schaefer (Ret.), did not recognize the president-elect.

Ahmadinejad was a member of the students' Office of the Consolidation of Unity, his office has denied that he had any role in the embassy takeover. Some sources suggest that he instead favored a takeover of the Soviet Embassy, in line with the revolutionary tenet that opposed both cold-war superpowers.

Since Ahmadinejad's victory over Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani - who wanted to explore better ties with the US - the president-elect says Iran has "no particular need" for such ties now.

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