A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

QOM, IRAN--On a snowy day early this year, a cheery crowd gathered in a busy square here, undeterred by the sting of icy wind gusts. A mobile crane moved into place to serve as a makeshift gallows, followed by black-masked hangmen. Three convicted drug traffickers were brought out, each made to stand on a stool as a noose was placed around his neck. Moments later, the hangmen swiftly pulled away the stools. For hours, the three bodies were left dangling.

Standing nearby was a lean, gray-bearded cleric from Mofid University, which is regarded as a relatively liberal seminary in this Shiite holy city south of Tehran. As he watched the grim spectacle, not the first he has witnessed, he was troubled by the number of public hangings in Iran and the message this sends not only to the outside world but at home as well. In 2007, Iran executed at least 317 people, most by hanging, up from 177 in 2006, according to Amnesty International. There have been at least 108 executions so far this year. "Through public executions, they create an atmosphere of intimidation and silence," he remarked a few days later, asking not to be named for his safety. "They want to frighten people, to make them afraid of voicing criticism. This is not the Islam I know.''

Such dissent fomenting in Qom, a center of Shiite scholarship, shows that the current Iranian government leadership faces rumblings of opposition not just from secular-minded intellectuals in affluent areas of northern Tehran but from elements in Iran's clerical class, too. This cleric--once a staunch supporter of the 1979 Islamic Revolution--is disillusioned with the "frightening direction" the revolution has veered toward, making way for what some have labeled a "turbaned dictatorship."

Read it all. There are still hardliners who are willing to defend the current regime and it still is more difficult to be a reformer than it is to be a hardliner.

But not as hard as it used to be.