ABSTRACT
At home the modern middle class was shocked by the assassinations of several writers and dissident politicians in late 1998. In November three authors, who were in the process of founding a secular Writers Association, were kidnapped and killed, and their corpses thrown in the streets of Tehran. The next month 70year-old Dariush Foruhar, a leader of the secular National Front, and his wife, Parvane, were fatally stabbed at home by someone who had made an appointment to see him. Ayatollah Khamanei strongly condemned the murders and instructed the intelligence agencies to apprehend the culprits. Declaring that “Islam is a religion of compassion,” he alleged that unrest was being promoted by “Islam’s enemies” and “foreign elements.”1 Khatami appointed a threemember committee, consisting of the intelligence minister, Qorban Ali Najafabadi, the interior minister, Abdul Wahid Musavi-Lari, and a representative of Leader Khamanei.
