TEHRAN -- Iranian President Mohammad Khatami's landslide victory in last week's presidential election is seen as a great boost for him and his reformist followers in the power struggle that pits them against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the hardline clerical establishment.
But the real question now is what he will do with his victory, and whether the conservatives -- daunted by its scale -- will ease their opposition to his reforms, or, if they don't, whether Khatami will increase the heat on them, thereby intensifying the power struggle.
That is the danger to which Khamenei pointed when, after the results were announced, he urged the people "not to help the enemy achieve its aim of shattering our national unity by speaking of winners and losers." His advice went unheeded by jubilant Khatami supporters who went into the streets late Saturday night to celebrate. In what some Iranians saw as an ominous portent of a hardening divide, loyalist Basij militiamen came out to confront them, beating them up and smashing windshields.