In Iran, Faith Makes Room for Money : Mideast: These are hard times in the hard-line Islamic republic. While many of its citizens struggle, the ruling ayatollahs are flourishing.

TEHRAN —  On the tree-shaded downtown campus of Tehran University, Ayatollah Musavi Ardebili took up Topic No. 1 in his sermon at Friday prayers: money.

The aged cleric instructed about 500 of the faithful sitting cross-legged on a concrete terrace that while hoarding and price-rigging are considered good business in the capitalist West, they definitely are not in the world of Islam. Allah and the Prophet Mohammed demand a charitable nature, said Ardebili, whose long white beard, round face and rimless glasses might suggest a department store Santa, were it not for the black turban and robe.

Nevertheless, the ayatollah went on, a good Muslim also takes care of himself. And Ardebili certainly has, according to all accounts here. The former high court justice, considered a radical or hard-liner in the political spectrum, now operates from the holy city of Qom. He’s in construction and publishing--and doing well, like most of the senior Muslim clerics who run Iran.

The revolution raised a decade ago to cleanse the country of Western contamination and overthrow a callous monarchy has made changes here. But the accumulation, exercise and perquisites of power remain distinctly Middle Eastern under the ayatollahs. These interpreters of the will of Allah wield political clout earned the old-fashioned way.

“If you want to do business here, you select an influential ayatollah and go with him,” a Western diplomat said. “Naturally, the bazaari (Iranian merchant) underlines his support with donations. It’s a political obligation.

“All the senior clergy sponsor charitable foundations, and most of them are very rich men,” he said, noting, for instance, the affluence of Ayatollah Mehdi Karrubi, the hard-line parliamentary speaker who controls the Bonyad Trust, or Martyr’s Fund, for victims of Iran’s 1980-88 war with Iraq.

The ayatollahs play politics in the open, raucous and rough, and move about the capital under heavy security, riding in Mercedes-Benz sedans with motorcycle escorts. In exclusive north Tehran, the streets of the senior clerics are blocked off by police. Bodyguards surround the ayatollahs at public appearances.

At Friday prayers, Ardebili was flanked by security men on a raised podium, and others stood in the aisles of the terrace, watching the crowd. For security reasons, the Friday prayer leader is never announced in advance.

These Islamic clerics are, after all, the political leaders of Iran, an Islamic republic and the world’s largest theocracy. In the early years of the revolution, Tehran was a bloody battleground in the struggle for power between the clerics and their secular rivals. Precautions remain.

But for most of the 55 million Iranians, the maneuverings of the lofty are merely a spectator sport.

“Just politics,” said a Tehran cabdriver, a Christian named George. “It has nothing to do with me. These are all rich men. I’m not.”

For most Iranians, these are hard times in the Islamic republic. There’s a growing desperation in the polluted air of Tehran, and an increasing gap between the haves and have-nots.

Mohsen Talaei, a 30-year-old university graduate in laser and atomic physics, has lowered his sights.

“There are no jobs in my field,” he told a reporter over coffee at a Tehran hotel. “I’ve found work, but it’s at a factory making electrical fixtures.”

Talaei’s paycheck won’t cover the cost of an apartment. He lives with his parents. He can’t afford to get married. He wants to emigrate to Australia, where his brother lives.

“I think I’m a good candidate,” he said. “I hope so. I need opportunity, and I cannot find it here.”

Despite his frustrations, Talaei is among the fortunate, on the fringes of Tehran’s upper class, about 2 million people living in the fine homes and apartments in the northern part of the city, on the rising foothills of the snow-covered Alborz Mountains. With money for travel and an international outlook, the families of north Tehran seem almost like expatriates in their own country.

On their streets grows a persistent resistance to the cultural requirements of the Islamic state, such as the chador, the black head-to-toe gown worn by Muslim women here. In north Tehran, the women have substituted for the chador an outfit that might be seen on a rainy day in London: a fashionable scarf covering the head, but not all the hair; a buttoned coat in light tan or blue, dropping to mid-calf; and a pair of European heels.

The chador prevails among the poor of south Tehran, many of them immigrants from the villages who have swelled the population of the capital to more than 10 million. They follow the traditional ways, but the hard times have shortened their patience, as well. According to accounts from both foreigners and Iranians, the south Tehran poor have driven the komiteh (morals police) from some neighborhoods with stones.

Iran, a country with the resources--primarily oil--to do better, has been marooned somewhere between the Third World and Second World. The government’s current five-year economic plan proposes the creation of 2 million new jobs, but that will take foreign investment and the world market is still skittish. Only the Japanese appear prepared to make the long-haul commitment required.

Meanwhile, population growth is exploding: 45% of the population is younger than 15; the brain drain is a whirlpool; inflation is surging, at least 50% a year; the currency, the rial, has become nearly valueless, with the dollar rate in the black market as much as 20 times the official rate. A pack of Winston cigarettes costs the equivalent of $14 at the official rate, and less than $1 at the black-market rate. Government presses churned a lot of rials into the economy during the war, diplomats say, debasing the value.

Now the economy has become “dollar-oriented” at least, one diplomat said, meaning that Iranians will do most anything to lay their hands on American greenbacks. But many cannot.

The worst cases are the government workers. They are paid a pittance in rials and given a subsidy for food and housing. But the inflation rate has far outpaced the subsidy, and they cannot compete in free-market bidding for groceries and apartments.

“It’s very sad,” a European diplomat said of the ordeal of the government employees. “They’re just stripping their assets, selling their jewelry, their cars. They’ll sell a home that’s been in the family for generations to raise cash, then move into a rental--and then the rents start climbing.”

The bazaaris , selling goods for dollars, are maintaining the grip that has made them the “must” ally of any group holding political power here.

“These guys are wonderful,” a longtime British observer said of the merchant class. “There’s this guy down in the bazaar (the traditional marketplace) that you’d turn away from your back door. He wears filthy clothes, half his teeth are missing, and he wears these awful old slippers. But he’s one of the biggest merchants down there. That’s just his cover for the tax man.”

Bazaaris know all the tricks. Iranians traveling abroad can bring back one television set. The merchants will send an employee and 10 members of his family across the Persian Gulf to the nearby port of Dubai; each family member returns with a new Sony. All go into the bazaari ‘s warehouse.

Any able Iranian is working two jobs; your evening cabdriver may be a physician or an engineer. If his English is good, he’s probably a graduate of an American or British university. The second job means less time spent on the first job, of course.

An Italian businessman was giving the lowdown to a recently arrived Australian over chelokabab , grilled lamb over flavored rice, the national favorite, at the Laleh Hotel (formerly the Inter-Continental), which still greets patrons with a large sign declaring “Down with U.S.A.”

Said the Italian: “You must begin early. All the officials here leave their offices at 1 p.m.”

“Probably going to their second jobs,” the Australian suggested.

“Well, they’re not playing golf,” his companion responded.

All the activity makes Tehran appear even busier than usual, and it’s a pulsating place at any time. Except for the sea-green Mercedes of the ayatollahs and the Chevrolet Caprices of the 50,000 or so Kuwaiti refugees here (whose presence has sent hotel rates soaring), the city’s auto fleet is demolition-derby stuff. Five lanes of traffic jams along three-lane streets. Rush hour is a game of chicken. Buses have their own lanes, but the motorbikes have joined them, running like porpoises at the mouth of a whale. Jaywalkers are fearless.

It’s a bright population, with a high priority on education. Said Anthony Rudkin, a Briton who is a book salesman: “This is the biggest Middle East market by far.”

Rudkin was in Tehran this month laying the groundwork for the big spring book fair in Isfahan.

“Academic texts are our top seller,” he pointed out. Classes are taught in Farsi, the Iranian language, but the textbooks are in English and German.

The two channels on Iranian television run heavily to educational programs. A late-afternoon segment features a blackboard lecture in geometry. Like Arabs, Iranians are passionate about mathematics; at a moment’s notice, an Iranian will whip out a notebook and pencil to describe how various elements of Islamic design line up to make triangles and rectangles.

But unlike Arab stations in neighboring countries, Tehran TV broadcasts no American sitcoms or movies. The nightly 15-minute English-language news commences with the presenter’s words: “In the name of God, the compassionate and merciful, this is the news.”

President Hashemi Rafsanjani, a centrist who has built a Cabinet of technocrats and is opening doors to the West for help in restoring the economy, is slowly, steadily easing Iran away from the strict dictates of Islam and the factionalism among the ayatollahs that have hobbled political decision-making.

“Everything moderate flows from Rafsanjani,” the European diplomat said.

Added an Iranian university student: “You must not think of him as a mullah (cleric). That’s just a cover. He’s a politician, and the Iranian people respect him. He looks you right in the eye and talks to you. He’s a very relaxed man.”

Clever, too. Last summer, Rafsanjani moved to shore up his support on the Assembly of Experts, a body responsible for electing the national spiritual leader, now the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who, despite some apparent tactical differences, is seen as Rafsanjani’s close ally in power.

With elections to the assembly pending, the president’s men forced into law a requirement that candidates take an examination in religious competence, which many mullahs took as an insult.

In the end, several high-placed rivals of Rafsanjani were declared to have failed the candidacy exam, including Speaker Karrubi and fellow hard-liners Ali Akbar Mohtashemi and Sadegh Khalkhali. One of the president’s opponents accused him of attempting to impose “American-style Islam” on Iran, just about the worst thing one could say of a leader here.

But Rafsanjani prevailed, and earlier this month stepped onto thin Islamic ice once again by endorsing the old Muslim practice of temporary marriages. The practice had been outlawed under the regime of the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, condemned by opponents as a form of legalized prostitution and supported by proponents who argued the system would ease the financial problems of women widowed by the war with Iraq. The president defended the practice as necessary “to satisfy the sexual needs of many Muslims.”

The seegeh debate itself, while based on religious questions, nevertheless marked an easing of social mores in Tehran.

Change comes incrementally in Iranian politics and culture, as Rafsanjani understands. Power is still based on feudal patronage, now in the hands of the ayatollahs. Overpopulation is the reformer’s worst enemy.

Yet change does come, as illustrated by the post-revolutionary quip from north Tehran: “Under the shah, we drank outdoors and prayed indoors. Under the mullahs, it’s the other way around.”