The Iranian Artists’ Forum is the kind of institution any country would be proud of. Situated in the heart of Tehran, the Forum is a lively, pulsating place, with auditoria, seminar rooms and exhibition halls, at which exciting events happen. It displays stunning modern sculptures and photographs and is home to one of the world’s best puppet theatres. The Forum exudes the freedom and creativity of Iran’s flourishing art world. Not many developing countries have a comparable arts complex inspired by liberal multiculturalism and pluralism.

The Forum is a redesigned barracks located right next to the long-closed down United States embassy. Hundreds of young people regularly “hang out” there. Its tastefully done ground-floor cafe is all-vegetarian and serves “chapatti bread”, besides sandwiches, pizzas, soft drinks and teas (including ayurvedic tea). Why, it even offers “Gita Set” and “Lotus Set” thalis!

It’s tragic, therefore, that the Forum is becoming a target of censorship and restrictions on free expression. Last week, it hosted the release of a special issue of a remarkable magazine, “International Gallerie”, published from Mumbai, devoted to Iran’s contemporary culture. But its management turned down requests to hold a vocal music performance as part of the event, and also disallowed the display of some posters based on the issue.

“It’s not that the Forum management favours censorship”, an art critic told me, while insisting on anonymity. (No private person wants to be quoted in Iran for fear of harassment). “But it’s being closely watched by the Ministry of Culture. The management is walking the knife’s edge. If it’s to keep the institution running, it must not do or say anything critical of the regime—or risk closure. It ends up practising self-censorship.”

Self-censorship’s opponents were recently offered an object lesson: the authorities closed down the remarkably cheerful “Café 78”, located at Aban Street, citing “licensing issues”. “Café 78” was the favourite haunt of radical students, both female and male, who would chat animatedly about avant-garde art, music, theatre, culture, Che Guerara, politics, whatever. As the conversation progressed, and modern Iranian music blared, veils would recede by several inches (all women must wear head-scarves in public), and romantic words would be discreetly exchanged.

“Café 78”’s closure, like the Forum’s self-censorship, is part of a new drive by Iran’s authorities to regiment individual conduct. They have launched a nationwide campaign against the wearing of tight clothes and skimpy headscarves by women. The police have so far picked up 150,000 women for wearing “bad headscarves”. Drives to enforce the “Islamic dress code” are customary at the beginning of summer, when hemlines become shorter.

Yet, the present drive has generated great fear because it comes on top of countless other repressive measures. These include detention of dozens of feminists for trying to collect one million signatures on a petition demanding changes in the Constitution in favour of gender equality. Schoolteachers have been arrested for agitating for higher pay. (Most teachers in Iran’s well-run government schools earn less than the $500 p.m. considered the urban family poverty line). Many students’ unions stand banned. Even worse have been the purges of scores of secular teachers from the universities, and closure of pro-reform publications, including the daily Sharq—on top of more than 110 periodicals shut over six years.

The repression, say Iranian analysts, is not a specific, well-honed response to a particular threat. “It’s part of a strategy of ‘regime maintenance’,” says a political scientist. “The regime’s hardliners and conservatives don’t want people, especially the youth, to become or feel free. They know that young Iranians loathe regimentation and don’t care for the official brand of Islam. They take recourse to so-called religious values of the Constitution and vilayat-e-faqih (government guided by clerics) to enforce a certain measure of discipline.”

This discipline, to be fair, is not extreme. Iran is not a version of ‘Taliban Lite”, a clone of Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, with an intolerant, inflexible Islam. Iran remains a plural society, whose Islam is more about ritual than rigid doctrine. Iranians love to talk irreverently about their leaders. They interact closely with the West through their million-plus expatriate citizens, the Internet, and popular culture, including Hollywood, jeans and fast food.

One consequence of the mismatch between “regime maintenance” and popular aspirations to freedom is duality, even hypocrisy. Public debate is banned on “sensitive” subjects, including security and nuclear issues. But people discuss these all the time—in classrooms, buses, homes, and cafes. Women “jump” barriers ingeniously—by creating dummy websites and through blogs. (Iran has the world’s third highest number of blogs.) Officially, liquor is a strict no-no. But it flows like water in Iran’s living rooms. The best local stuff is made from kishmish (raisins). The Armenian minority is allowed to make wine, beer and spirits. Specially established distilleries in neighbouring countries also cater to Iran’s thirst for alcohol.

Iran is one of the few West Asian countries which has universal adult franchise and holds relatively free and fair elections. But it’s a deeply flawed democracy, with limited freedom of political association. Parties are registered only if they conform to Islamic tenets. Freedom in this deeply paradoxical society has had periodic ups and downs. Today, it’s going through a downward phase. There’s no telling how long this will last.

Three factors are likely to influence Iran’s short-term evolution: President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s growing unpopularity; the ability of the reformists to counter the government’s use of the slogan of the current year (“Islam and the Nation”); and Iran’s growing confrontation with the West, in particular, the US.

Mr Ahmedinejad has recently suffered several setbacks, including the defeat of his nominees in local elections. He has blown up much of the special fund financed by Iran’s oil sales, estimated at $40 billion—through populist handouts. He’s increasingly seen as a politician given to intemperate statements. He’s not fully trusted by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. If he’s reined in by the Establishment, including the National Security Council—as happened during the recent British sailors’ detention and release—that will strengthen the reformists. Such reformists, including former Presidents Mohammed Khatami and Ali Akbar Hashmi Rafsanjani, could still exercise a restraining influence on the government.

The reformists’ success will critically depend on how effectively they can prevent nationalism from being used as a self-legitimising platform by the hardliners. Britain’s recent adventurism in allowing its sailors to stray into Iranian waters played straight into the hardliners’ hands. They drummed up national pride and won a public relations victory. Eventually, Britain had to open clandestine talks with Tehran and make a deal leading to the release of a detained Iranian diplomat.

Much will also depend on how the West deals with Iran’s nuclear programme. The US is implacably hostile towards Iran. It wrongly sees Iran as an “Axis of Evil” pro-terrorist state. In fact, Iran is viscerally anti-al-Qaeda and has behaved with restraint in Shia-majority Iraq despite its considerable influence there. Iran feels humiliated at the sanctions imposed on it for running a nuclear programme which is basically legitimate—despite some non-disclosure of information and relatively minor infractions of International Atomic Energy Agency rules.

The more Iran is cornered over its nuclear activities, the more it’ll be tempted to be defiant—and make boastful claims about its prowess in uranium enrichment. In reality, Iran is many years away from enriching enough uranium for a Bomb. Its facilities for uranium conversion into hexafluoride at Natanz and its centrifuge plant at Isfahan are both under IAEA safeguards and cannot be used for weapons purposes.

Contrary to the claim that it has installed 3,000 centrifuges in place of the original 164, the IAEA says it has about 1,300 machines of a primitive variety. It’s unlikely that Iran has stabilised the centrifuges, which rotate at extremely high speeds such as 1,000 revolutions per second, and are very fragile. (Even India has had serious difficulties in stabilising centrifuges.)

More important, it’s known that the Natanz facility produces gas which is too impure to lead to successful enrichment. IAEA director-general Mohammed ElBaradei discounts Iran’s claim to “industrial-scale” production of nuclear fuel and says “Iran is still at the beginning stages” in enrichment.

This offers the US and the European Union-3 (UK, France and Germany) an opportunity to negotiate nuclear restraint with Iran while not denying its right to enrichment for peaceful purposes. Iran has indicated its willingness to talk—without suspending enrichment. A way out is possible. But the US must muster the will to explore it while abandoning its ill-conceived plans to attack Iran.

Much of what happens to and in Iran will depend on the US—just as it did in 1953, when Washington toppled Iran’s first elected leader, and in 1979, when it misjudged the Shah’s unpopularity and courted the Revolution’s hostility.