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TEHRAN (AFP) - If Iran's hardline clergy has had little trouble barring reformist candidates from parliament, it is finding it much tougher to keep dissent from spreading on the increasingly busy Internet.
Dozens of Farsi-language political websites have sprung up catering to Iranian web surfers hungry for news and views that go beyond the austere, official line of the Islamic Republic.
And while the ruling clerics look certain to tighten their hold on the political establishment in Friday's parliamentary election, they are fighting a losing battle to keep dissident websites in check, experts said.
"They are closing them down left and right," said one Internet executive who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But you close one, 10 more open."
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Ali Shemirani, correspondent for the weekly magazine Assr-e Ertebat (Communications Era), estimated that between 20 and 30 major political websites were active in Iran and most of them were pro-reformist.
With some 20,000 Iranian "web logs," or online personal diaries, also sprouting up, he said, between 50 and 60 have become widely read for their overtly political content.
"Statistics show that these types of sites are growing," Shemirani told AFP. "The government may not be happy about it, but they can't stop it completely."
Reliable figures on the number of Internet users in Iran are hard to pin down, with estimates ranging from 2.5 million to four million, double the level of four years ago.
Experts say the number is likely to more than double again in the next five years in a country where two-thirds of the 66 million people are below 30 years of age and many are already technologically savvy.
Shemirani said users first zeroed in on chat rooms and e-mail but now are branching out into other areas, including current affairs. "People can now express their political ideas more freely than before," he said.
The capacity for carrying Farsi content on the Interent should also rise significantly in the coming months when Iran's first broadband services will be available, experts said.
One popular site currently available is Gooya, a directory of links to everything from news to Canadian immigration law. Another is the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), founded four years ago as an alternative to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
"Since the people want more and more to get their unvarnished news items from different sites, I think the number of people visiting ISNA is on the rise," said the head of the agency's information technology desk who asked not to be named.
Reformists are sponsoring a number of sites carrying political news, including Emrooz (Today), which has been dodging a government crackdown and is based outside of Iran.
Parliamentary candidates on both sides of the political spectrum are also tapping into the Internet, with some putting their names on cards offering one-hour web access as an electoral inducement.
"I think most of the candidates and political figures have websites. They realize this is a good way to get in touch with the public," said Abdolleh Fateh, president of the Internet provider Pars Online.
Even the arch-conservative Guardians Council, which was responsible for disqualifying more than 2,300 candidates from Friday's polls, has cottoned on to the power of the web.
The poweful council, controlled by religious hardliners, has its own site of news and background documents, preaching unabashedly from its homepage, "Don't let the revolution fall into the hands of scoundrels."
One of the sassiest sites is run by the reformist vice president, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who keeps up a web log with his own musings, gossip, anecdotes and candid photos of Iranian politicans.
He is equally candid about his feelings on Friday's elections: "I don't give a damn."
