The outspoken 67-year-old Ayatollah Montazeri enjoys the support of independent bazaar merchants.

In Khomeini's Iran, the close links between mullahs and bazaar merchants made it possible for a clever bodyguard like Rafigh-doost to become a financier.

From nuclear negotiators to student dissidents, from bazaar merchants to turbaned mullahs, Iranians agree: the right to develop nuclear power is a point of national pride.

In both capitals, everyone - taxi drivers, waiters, bazaar merchants, upper-class folks in leafy suburbs -wants United States currency.

For bazaar merchants like Hamdi Khalil, the important thing is to put the gulf crisis behind him and to start winning back business.

The army and Revolutionary Guards are split, and workers and the bazaar merchants have stayed off the streets.

But Mr. Karbaschi also made enemies, angering bazaar merchants by raising taxes and contributing to the city's soaring real estate prices.

There was grumbling about the economic chaos even from the bazaar merchants, who are a powerful force in Iranian politics and largely underwrote the cost of the 1979 revolution.

Mr. Rafsanjani, from a family of bazaar merchants, is a champion of free enterprise.

Some bazaar merchants and high-ranking Government officals have gotten rich on the system, buying goods at the official rate and selling them for 20 times as much.