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The backlash against what had begun as a minor outbreak of dissent was severe, but there are signs that the Iranian student movement has some grit. Officials claim that at one point some students held three officers hostage -- before another police attack managed to rescue them.

In the Western media, student movements in other countries simply are and occasionally just happen to have the power to overthrow governments. Recent student revolutions of the Philippines, South Korea and Indonesia have been shrouded in similarly misty portrayals. Since student movements are often unstructured and therefore demand a complex understanding of the culture, it's easy for the media to treat the movements as idealistic, vague happenings that need no special explanation.

Such is the case in Iran. When the movement needs to be explained, the media usually points to the election of moderate cleric Mohammad Khatami, who surprised the nation two years ago by seizing the presidency with an astounding 20 million votes, gaining the support of fully 70 percent of the voting population. The soft-spoken Khatami is no radical, though his reformist views got him ousted from the government in 1988. But even in his rehabilitated state of grandeur, his influence is severely curtailed by the national Islamic church. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his clergy wield ultimate power over both the elected government and the military. Some speculate that the clergy allowed, or even orchestrated, Khatami's candidacy as a symbol of modern Iran's political diversity. But no one expected him to win by a landslide.

It's true that the Iran that voted Khatami into power was a young one. The baby boom following the 1979 Islamic revolution produced a nation in which two-thirds of the population are under 25. Hooshang Amirahmadi, professor of public policy at Rutgers University and President of the American-Iranian Council estimates that the population represented by younger voters and student protesters -- ranging from 17 to 30 -- constitutes about 45 percent of the population. For these young people Khatami may be the closest thing to legal political diversity they've ever encountered.

Yet some say the impression that Khatami is the engine of the student movement is a mistake on the part of the Western media. "Khatami did not make the movement," says L.A. radio host Manook Khodabakhshian, whose "Zero Hour" show on Voice of Iran serves the Iranian global Diaspora. "The movement made him. When he was first elected everyone started calling him the Iranian Gorbachev, but I am not so optimistic. After Khatami, then we can have our Gorbachev."

Next page | The students' radical demands