Iran fires up voters with partial lifting of water pipe ban

The Guardian

A woman smokes a water pipe in a Tehran tea house. Iran has lifted the ban on smoking water pipes in tea houses for men only. Photograph: Alexandra Boulat/VII

Revoking a smoking ban may seem an unlikely way to boost election turnouts. But in Iran, authorities are hopeful that allowing the traditional hubble-bubble, or water pipes, back into tea houses could encourage reluctant voters to go to the polls.

The government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has signed into law a bill that removes tea houses from the list of places where smoking tobacco is prohibited, Iranian newspapers reported on Thursday.

The move comes only two weeks after Iran's court of administrative justice, a judicial body independent of the government, banned the smoking of all sorts of tobacco in traditional restaurants and tea houses. Iranians were allowed only to smoke certain types – perceived to be less dangerous – in the past.

Since Ahmadinejad first took the office in 2005, water pipes have intermittently been banned from, then allowed, in tea houses.

In his early years in power, Ahmadinejad came under pressure from conservatives to curb water pipe smoking, which had become a popular pastime for the young people but was seen as culturally decadent by the regime, despite being an integral part of the Persian culture for centuries. A smoking ban was eventually passed in October 2006 but was lifted later to allow certain kinds of tobacco.

In July this year, Hossein Sajedinia, the Tehran police chief, announced a new restriction, prohibiting women from entering tea houses and traditional restaurants where water pipes, known as ghalyan in Persian, were served.

The new reprieve, which appears to be only for men, has already met with criticism. Etemaad, the reformist newspaper, quoted Hosseinali Shahriari, the head of the parliamentary committee on health and treatment, as saying that the government's decision was against the law.

The swift repeal of a ban after just two weeks highlights the extent of a power struggle between the president and his supporters on one side, and the conservatives of the judiciary and the parliament on the other side, fighting with each other for the next parliamentary elections due in March 2012 and the presidential vote in 2013.

Under Iranian law, Ahmadinejad is limited to two terms and cannot run in 2013, but conservatives close to the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are worried that the president is trying to preserve his dwindling power by helping his allies win as many seats as possible in the next parliament or grooming one of his confidants as his successor. In response, the conservatives have come up with a radical solution: scrapping the post of directly elected president and restoring that of prime minister appointed by the parliament.

But Mohammad Javad Larijani, a top aide to Khamenei, told Reuters on Wednesday that the idea is "still at the level of contemplation" and that Iran will have at least one more president.