The episode recalls several instances in which Mr. Rafsanjani floated proposals to allow women to wear makeup and encourage the return of music and singing, stirring hard-line opposition.

Enforcement is strict and the laws are inflexible, with the government stance being hard-line opposition to pornography.

The mutuality is necessary so that leaders in both countries can counter hard-line opposition.

He chastised Republicans for their hard-line opposition to labor unions, and he spoke to union conventions.

For the time being, the hard-line opposition to the American-led military operation in Somalia is mostly talk.

"But we have no hard-line opposition to someone proposing different wording that conveys the same principle," he said.

In addition to the hard-line opposition, a new centrist bloc had arisen with the power to swing votes to the right or left.

Some analysts predict that the Gaidar team will be forced out by the hard-line opposition to capitalist change.

Germany, whose economy is weakening, has been particularly active in lobbying France to drop its hard-line opposition and agree to a compromise.

In a resignation speech in Parliament last week, he bitterly attacked Mrs. Thatcher over her hard-line opposition to further European political and economic integration.