TEHRAN, Iran - Under banners and balloons praising the Islamic Revolution, crowds streamed onto the streets yesterday to celebrate a death: the end of Iran's Western-backed monarchy 25 years ago.
In another part of Tehran - away from the speeches and patriotic songs - a student activist waged a quiet counterattack on the system that succeeded the Shah.
He worked the phones and faxes to support the boycott of Feb. 20 parliamentary elections that liberals consider hijacked by Iran's ruling theocracy.
The dissident also dreams of someday joining an even bigger protest. He calls it a pink -- or bloodless - revolution: applying the same tactics of mass resistance and clear goals that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini used to claim control of Iran in 1979.
I don't like what has happened afterward
said Roozbeh Riazi, a leader of the Office for Fostering Unity, Iran's biggest reformist student movement. But you could say his revolution was let's say very artistic.
Could something like that happen again?
A growing array of believers -from think tank analysts to veterans of Iran's political scuffles - say next week's elections could offer a defining moment for the country.
It could, they say, finally clarify and energize the so-called reform movement that started with the election of President Mohammad Khatami in 1997 and his calls for Islamic democracy.
This boycott is the beginning of the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran
said Qasem Sholeh Sadi, a former lawmaker who wrote a stunning open letter in 2002 to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei complaining about a lack of political openness. The boycott is the start of social disobedience.
For years, Iranian reformists have been unable to find a unifying theme. Some pressed for more social freedoms. Others sought a greater voice in political affairs or expanded human rights. Underlying it all are differences over how strictly Islam should be interpreted.
But the anger over the elections could sharpen the focus straight to the top - to the almost unlimited power of the ruling clerics.
Yesterday's celebrations marked the Feb. 11, 1979, resignation of the last Shah's prime minister, the culmination of an uprising that led to an Islamic government so strict that it initially banned all dancing, all foreign music except classical orchestra and all foreign movies that showed women.
In recent years, the conservatives allowed the social red lines to drift. They tolerated things such as satellite dishes, dating and music from Iranian-American rockers in Los Angeles. But the hard-line power base never cracked.
This time, the boycott movement is directly challenging one of the pillars of the establishment: the appointed Guardian Council. The 12-cleric group, which recruits candidates for high public office, rejected more than 3,000 reformists from the elections.
Liberal lawmakers countered with sit-ins, mass resignations and once-unthinkable denunciations of the theocracy. The council later lifted the ban on about 1,100 of the candidates, but reformists were not satisfied and called for a boycott. Among those blackballed by the council is Khatami's younger brother and deputy speaker of the parliament, Mohammad Reza Khatami.
Elections are a symbol of democracy if they are performed correctly
Khatami said in a speech before thousands marking the anniversary. If this is restricted
it's a threat to the nation and the system. This threat is difficult to reverse.
There have been steady predictions about the end of the regime since the first major student-led unrest in 1999. Each time, the protests fizzled. The common wisdom is that Iranians - even the most disenchanted - do not have the stomach for another attempt at all-out revolt.
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