Recent news from Iran brings to mind the events leading up to the ouster of the shah some 20 years ago. The situation is more complex than that, writes PNS commentator Gary Sick, but for the moment a reformer seems to be benefiting from an inept opposition. Sick, a former member of the National Security Council, teaches at Columbia University and is director of Gulf 2000, an international research project on policy developments in the Persian Gulf.

Iran's President Khatami is indeed fortunate in his enemies.

The revolutionary hardliners who oppose his reform program, although powerful, are clumsy and predictably inept. They have no program beyond the ritual mouthing of slogans that are increasingly irrelevant to Iran's current situation -- and largely incomprehensible to the majority of Iran's population who have no memory of the time before the revolution.

In addition, by focusing on political and social issues, the opposition diverts attention from Khatami's great weakness, the economy, which is certainly no better and arguably worse than when he assumed power two years ago.

Their philosophy appears to be that the government is divinely ordained and so not subject to question or opposition. This notion has appeared in various guises over the centuries, always as an excuse for tyranny. The people of Iran are not buying.

In the 1997 election, conservative forces could offer only more of the same -- a formula with appeal to no one except the tiny entrenched elite -- and this assured Khatami the greatest electoral landslide in Iranian history.

The elite, apparently assuming no one would dare vote against them, made only half-hearted efforts to manipulate the voting.

Once they realized the magnitude of their miscalculation, they counterattacked by opposing Khatami's cabinet appointments. Again they failed. Then they began harassing key figures close to the president, especially Karbaschi, the popular mayor of Tehran. Although they succeeded in sending him to jail, his trial exposed "revolutionary justice" to the full light of public opinion, which found it shockingly flawed.

Faced with a flood of critical commentary in an increasingly free press, hardliners attempted to close down papers that disagreed with them, calling on vague constitutional limits to freedom of expression. But they underestimated the determination and courage of journalists and publishers -- many of them veterans of the revolution. As fast as one paper was closed, a new (and often more outspoken) one arose to take its place. And the public snapped them up with an appetite that persuaded all but the most obtuse observers of the futility of this game of musical chairs.

With no prospect of winning the battle of ideas, repressive elements within the intelligence and security establishments turned to naked force. A group of holdovers in the Information Ministry began assassinating writers who did not share their view of the country's future. They were found out and some ringleaders were arrested, beginning the long overdue process of cleaning out the intelligence bureaus.

That process has not been completed -- the recent suicide of a key figure in the conspiracy casts doubt on the system's ability to seek out and punish those who may have been involved in the plot. However, Khatami does have more control over the intelligence forces as a direct result of the excesses of a few individuals.

Indeed, the brutality of the most extreme reactionaries offends even their prospective supporters. The intelligence and security forces, after all, remain in the hands of the conservative factions and are directly answerable to Ayatollah Khamenei. These leaders must either denounce the actions of those who claim to be their most loyal followers or try to justify the unjustifiable. To their credit, most conservatives have issued denunciations, but they have been put on the defensive, and their own legitimacy has suffered.

The most recent episode was collaboration between security forces and the self-appointed enforcers of revolutionary vigilance -- the Ansar-e Hezbollah -- to attack Tehran University dormitories. The pictures of burned out rooms, shattered doors, and physical injuries were sobering reminders that the rule of law is still a fragile notion.

As Iran is a nation constantly in touch with its own history, its citizens cannot fail to observe the eerie resemblance between the recent actions and the student demonstrations of 1977-78 and the intervention of the shah's security forces, together with bands of hired thugs. Many people in positions of great power in Iran today were on the other side of the barricades then, and they well know what happens if such abuses occur with the approval -- tacit or explicit -- of the authorities.

It is too early to know if the government will emerge from these events better able to restrain its own police. But the initial signs are encouraging, including a prompt denunciation by the Supreme National Security Council and the call to investigate and control the street thugs of the Ansar-e Hezbollah.

If Iran's leaders take the necessary steps to control both government and quasi-government elements, this latest outrage by security forces will accomplish what the forces of reform are seemingly unable to do on their own. The hardliners will have proved themselves -- inadvertently -- President Khatami's most effective allies in promoting reform in Iran.