'There Is No Other Way'.(religious death sentence)

Last week a judge in the Iranian city of Hamadan sentenced reformist activist and university professor Hashem Aghajari to death for blasphemy. Aghajari was quoted saying, among other things, "Marx says, 'Religion is the opiate of masses,' but I say it is also the opiate of governments." In Tehran last week, the ruling sparked five days of student protests, some of the most vehement mass demonstrations since 1999. The unrest has underscored the tensions between reformists and conservatives in Iran, something with which Mashallah Shamsolvaezin is intimately familiar. A leading Iranian newspaper editor and confidant of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, Shamsolvaezin was himself accused of blasphemy four years ago and spent 19 months in jail. The conservative-dominated judiciary has shut down six of his newspapers in the past five years. NEWSWEEK's Maziar Bahari spoke with him in Tehran last week. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What do you think about Aghajari's death sentence?

SHAMSOLVAEZIN: This is a political sentence and not a result of legal procedures. Many decisions made by the judiciary in the past few years have been more political than legal. Whenever the conservatives face a political challenge and see themselves in a weak position, they do something like this to compensate for their deficiencies. But this time their decision has backfired, and we are witnessing their retreat after negative reactions to the sentence. Even many of the grand ayatollahs don't approve the sentence.

But why now?

It's a reaction to President Khatami's two proposed bills to the Parliament [which increase the power of president and curb the hard- liners' supervisory power]. The firm stance of the president and the Parliament to pass these bills made the conservatives search for a solution to stop the bills. They couldn't do it in the Parliament, where reformists have the majority. So they took the game to a different arena and issued this sentence. You can see that in the past few days no one talks about the bills anymore. Mr. Aghajari's case is the main topic of discussions now.

Are the conservatives that organized to be able to conspire and plan such action?

If you look at their actions in the past few years you come to the conclusion that it can't be haphazard. The conservatives have consistently been able to change the balance to their advantage in these situations. We don't even know for sure if the case was reviewed ...