Former President Khatami to Challenge Ahmadinejad in June's Election

By Hannes Artens

The former and future President of Iran? (Photo Source: Wikipedia)

Brian snatched the laurel from me for writing first about this groundbreaking development on our site, so let's give him credit where credit is due. Now it's official what we all have been speculating on for months and what has become almost a certainty over the last weeks: former president and the standard bearer of the reform movement in Iran, Mohammad Khatami announced his candidacy in June's presidential elections. His decision is rather dictated by sense of duty than conviction.

Conviction that he can muster the support to beat Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - for despite Khatami's prominence and reputation the race is far from being called - nor that, if he gets elected, he'll be given the freedom to implement the reforms he thinks pivotal for Iran to advance from international pariah to the status of a respected and pragmatic member of the family of nations.

So how is the coming showdown of titans, the personifications of the deep division running through Iranian society, to asses and where does yesterday's development leave the Obama administration, struggling to formulate a comprehensive approach to the Iranian stalemate?

First, let us have a brief look at the genesis of Khatami's second run. Disillusioned from his failure to use public pressure to force the arch-conservative Council of Guardians and the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khameini, to accept the need for reforms and liberalization, and to end Iran's international isolation Khatami ended his second term amidst boos of his erstwhile staunchest supporters, the students and youth of Iran's major cities. They never forgave him his hesitation to walk the last mile and openly challenge the system during the violent crackdown of student protests in July 1999, misinterpreting Khatami's nature. The "man with the chocolate robe," as he's affectionately called by his supporters, is no revolutionary, no Che who exchanged the beret with a turban, out to topple the system, but a philosopher king in the Platonic tradition who believes in cautious adjustments and gradual improvements to save the system, of which he is part of and fought for to come about, for a better tomorrow.

Khatami's legacy was restored by what came after him, much like Al Gore being forgiven all his occasional missteps in the light of the Bush presidency. If the student and reform movement was shocked by the brutality of the regime in the summer of '99, they had no idea what was in store for them, how thoroughly Iranian civil society was to be restricted, and civil liberties curtailed during the Ahmadinejad years (for those of you interested in this sea change, I recommend Azadeh Moaveni's vivid account, Honeymoon in Tehran, that moves anybody who came to know the spirit of optimism of the early Khatami years to tears).

And yet, despite his almost supernatural status as the rehabilitated standard bearer of the reform movement, Khatami hesitated to challenge Ahmadinejad. Reportedly, he favored his former adviser and like minded spirit, Mir-Hossein Moussavi, to lead the reform camp, and only decided to step in himself after Moussavi declined. I believe what brought about Khatami's change of mind in the end, was the historic election of Barack Obama and the need, crucial for the survival of Iran, to accept the hand reached out to them by the new American president. Khatami acknowledges that back in 2001/03, when Iran declared its solidarity with the US in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack, supported America's invasion of Afghanistan, approached the White House with a once-in-a-lifetime offer to unilaterally abandon its nuclear project, and was rewarded for these conciliatory gestures with being put on the "axis of evil" list, the recipient was wrong, not the message. Now, when his country faces the choice between war and survival, he puts all his political capital at risk to give it a second try. Or as a former minister of the Khatami cabinet puts it, "the one thing he doesn't want to happen is for people to blame him later that he didn't offer himself when he was called upon and needed most."

Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a close aide of Mohammad Khatami reveled, "if the voter participation is high, we can easily win the election." Although he seems aware of the reform camp's biggest challenge - persuading voters to forget Khatami's failure to push through a liberalization of society - any such hopes are premature. The three-tier race between Ahmadinejad, Khatami, and the conservative candidate - at present either Ali Larijani or Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf seem most likely - is widely open. It all will come down to how much the bazaaris will blame Ahmadinejad's politics for the strangling recession and to what extent he can mobilize the rural masses, he has bestowed the horn of plenty on, to support him. But even then, here's one golden rule of thumb: no candidate, the Supreme Leader has not given his tacit approval, wins an election in Iran. The means at Ayatollah Khameini's disposal to thwart the reformist challenge are legion, a lesson they had to learn the hard way as recent as in the elections for the Majlis last year. Only, and I can't emphasize this strongly enough, if the Supreme Leader comes to the conclusion that a second term for Ahmadinejad is not in the system's best interest, Khatami has a chance to win.

And America? Well, the very day Khatami announced his candidacy and the week the Islamic Republic celebrates its 30th anniversary, the paragon of the neocons, the Mussolini-adorer and Iran-Contra veteran, Michael Ledeen, had that much to say in the Wall Street Journal:

Any serious person looking at Iran today, however, would be more likely to conclude that their doom, not their triumph, is right around the corner ... A free Iran must be the objective. There is abundant evidence that the overwhelming majority of Iranians want to be part of the Western world and live in peace with their neighbors. If Iran were free and democratic, we would not lose sleep over uranium enrichment at Natanz. We must be the people's voice. We can offer more hope than Mr. Ahmadinejad's broadcasts from outer space [in reference to the telecommunications satellite Iran launched last week]."

Fortunately, his is a minority opinion. The Obama administration, on the other hand, is struggling for three months on whether to respond to a letter Ahmadinejad sent in November, congratulating Obama for his victory at the polls, and over who will become the president's envoy for Iran (Dennis Ross looks more likely by the day). Admittedly, the decision on how to reach out to Iran and offer them an all-encompassing dialogue without appearing to intervene in its presidential election, or worse, to strengthen Ahmadinejad as the man who tamed the "Great Satan", is a tricky one. Here subtle signals to the Supreme Leader are what this moment demands. A groundbreaking decision last week by the US Treasury to brand PJAK, the PKK offspring George Bush used as a proxy to fight Iran, a terrorist organization, is a formidable example of how to do it. Michael Ledeen's "We must be the people's voice"-verbal flatulence, then again, is the best way to ensure a Khatami defeat. But perhaps this is exactly what he is working on.

--
Hannes Artens is the author of The Writing on the Wall, the first anti-Iran-war novel.

Hannes Artens February 9, 2009 - 10:36am

Hannes Artens's diary | printer friendly version |

( categories: Iran | Opinion )

IMHO

Any leader of a nation that reaches for a phone rather than a gun at the outset of a crisis is a good one. Doesn't matter if they run Iran, China, or the USA. Anytime you are setting yourself up for war or actively trying to trigger a war, you're putting yourself in a bad position. I hope he wins in Iran and engages the US.

zot23 February 9, 2009 - 10:44am

Unfortunately

I think the position of much of the American political establishment fears the election of Khatami in the sense that those interests do not want a stable, internationally integrated Iran operating as a legitimate regional power in the mideast. That would only be desired if Iran functioned as a client state of the US and I doubt if that's what the Iranian moderates have in mind.

Ahmadinejad performs the function of a US hegemonic foil perfectly. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the US upped its anti-Iranian rhetoric--or military confrontation--prior to the election in order to damage Khatami's chances.

Just call me cynical.

sleepy February 9, 2009 - 12:14pm

I thought Larijani had specifically stated...

...last year that he would not run. Something happen to change his mind/change his mind for him?

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

JustPlainDave February 9, 2009 - 12:25pm

Encouraging

Excellent article.

I noticed Obama's thoughtful and diplomatic response to a question on Iran yesterday. It was refreshing watch a president skillfully conduct public diplomacy. If the powers that be in Iran think that it's acceptable to have someone as president who not only denies the Holocaust and also holds a conference for deniers, i.e., Ahmadinejad , then there's little hope.

We'll see if there are the same tricks this time - eliminating candidates all together and thugs intimidating voters.

Michael Collins February 10, 2009 - 3:34am

Obama's Persian double, PT 1

US-IRAN WALL OF MISTRUST, Part 1

Obama's Persian double
By Pepe Escobar

On Tuesday, Iran celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. In this year of celebrations galore - from the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall to the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution - why not also dream of a year zero?

It's September 2009. Barack Obama is the United States president. Mohammad "dialogue of civilizations" Khatami is the Iranian president. Khatami flies to New York for the United Nations General Assembly. He bumps into Obama in the corridors of the UN. With fists unclenched, they exchange pleasantries - and retire to a room for some real "face-to-face". The 30-year - some would say 56-year - wall of mistrust between

the US and Iran finally comes tumbling down.

If current Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad remains a mirror image of the departed George W Bush, Khatami could not be a more fitting mirror image of Obama. Within the complex parameters of the Iranian system, he is a reformist able to reach out to conservatives and wildly popular among women, the young and progressives of all stripes. He's running for president in the June elections - and he's got what it takes to give Ahmadinejad a run for his rials.

Khatami is fluent in German and an avid reader of German philosopher Jurgen Habermas and the Frankfurt School of critical theory masters (Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer). He is a former minister of culture (1989-1992) and was elected president in 1997 with a landslide 70% of the vote, with women and young people overwhelmingly behind him, and re-elected in 2001.

He was also the man who called for a "dialogue of civilizations". The Bush administration snubbed him - as it was entangled in the failed, Huntingtonian thesis of the "clash of civilizations".

Years later, one day before the 5th anniversary of September 11, 2001, Khatami delivered a landmark speech at Harvard - the temple where Samuel Huntington was a professor. Khatami preferred to fight missiles with words. He presented his concept to an array of global forums, including the UN, which even declared 2001 - of all years - the Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations.

US corporate media did not even bother to debate what Khatami had to say to Harvard.

Fight the power
This correspondent traveled widely across Iran during the reformist Khatami years, in the late 1990s, and then when Iran was already included in the "axis of evil" by Bush, along with Iraq and North Korea. In Khatami's Iran, the flow towards more personal liberties and less repression of mores was glaring, but as glaring as the moves by the "system" - embodied by the mullahcracy and the judiciary - to resolutely thwart it.

Years later, Ahmadinejad's definitely non-reformist economic policies proved themselves to be an absolute disaster. Official inflation stands at 24% - and rising. Ahmadinejad, who spends a lot of time in countryside tours, may have done some good to the rural masses by investing part of Iran's oil revenues on infrastructure - building better roads and better schools. But the large Iranian urban middle class is hurting - from students and working professionals to those who depend on a meager state pension, not to mention farmers in the countryside itself.

Much worse is the discontent in the bazaar - Iran is still basically a bazaar economy - and that means an organized net of import-export bazaaris, shopkeepers, moneylenders and captains of industry traditionally very close to the clerical establishment.

So economic recklessness is not a privilege of mullahs - it also affects former, non-clerical Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, or Pasdaran, like self-described "street cleaner of the people" Ahmadinejad.

Social justice, wealth redistribution and caring for the downtrodden - to the horror of US Republicans - remain central tenets of the Islamic Revolution. Thus Khatami has found his opening: he argues that Ahmadinejad's economic incompetence undermines the every essence of the Islamic Revolution - as defined by the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini himself. Quite a few conservatives - although not the hardliners - subscribe to this view.
On top of it, Ahmadinejad is an apocalyptical Mahdist - believing from the bottom of his heart in the imminent arrival of the Mahdi, the "occult" Twelfth Imam. Most Iranian Shi'ites are not Mahdist.

The US-imposed sanctions over Iran's nuclear program also bite. Because of them, Royal Dutch Shell and France's Total dropped out from developing stretches of the huge South Pars gas fields - and so far they have not been replaced by (inferior) Chinese or Russian know-how.

Khatami for his part remains very popular in Iran. His views are eminently moderate. He blasted Ahmadinejad for his childish Holocaust denial. He favors a normal relationship with Washington. He favors a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

He offered the ultimate diplomatic olive branch to Washington in early 2003 via the Swiss ambassador in Tehran - under the general umbrella of finally defeating Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Even recognizing Israel was on the table. As University of Michigan professor Juan Cole indelibly put it, "[Former US vice president Dick] Cheney is said to have shot down that initiative quicker than he could shoot a friend in the face." Khatami even agreed - in 2004 - for Iran to temporarily suspend its uranium-enrichment program.

His enemies, though, are very powerful - the ultra hardcore extreme right which controls the exclusive 12-member Council of Guardians, and many of the 86-member Council of Experts. For most of these clerics, anti-Americanism in itself is a religion, and the "Great Satan", even incarnated in Obama's skin, remains very much alive (and deceptive).

_{"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined." -Henry David Thoreau}

Tina February 12, 2009 - 6:12pm

Will Obama say 'we're sorry'?

Feb 13, 2009

US-IRAN WALL OF MISTRUST, Part 2
Will Obama say 'we're sorry'?
By Pepe Escobar

PART 1: Obama's Persian double

If United States President Barack Obama is really serious about "unclenched fists" in a new US-Iran relationship, he's got to take a serious, unbiased look at the US record.

Former US secretary of state Cordell Hull's classic comment about Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo - "He's a son-of-a-bitch, but he's our son-of-a-bitch" - has been the norm for decades. From the Somozas in Nicaragua to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, from Indonesia's Suharto to the shah of Iran, US foreign policy over the past decades has enshrined a hefty SOB gallery.

This gallery symbolizes the official Washington policy of US neo-colonialism - always indirect and non-ostensive, contrary to historical examples of European colonialism.

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has demanded apologies from the US as essential for smashing the wall of mistrust between Iran and the US. He has a point.

If president Jimmy Carter had apologized to Iran for the fact that the US since president Harry S Truman supported Mohammad Reza Pahlavi - aka the shah of Iran - and his tyranny; if he had promised not to subvert the Iranian revolution; and if he had committed to give back to the country the up to US$60 billion stolen by the shah, his family and acolytes, the infamous Iranian hostage crisis would have been solved swiftly.

But a weak Carter - often perceived as a country bumpkin Hamlet - was not the real power anyway. The real power behind the throne was David Rockefeller. German-Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt was right when she wrote that after 1918, political power, except revolutionary power, is pure operetta.

Do the Rockefeller shuffle

The shah's banker was David Rockefeller. He was the man responsible for the entry into the US of the "ailing" shah in 1979, which led to the attack on the US Embassy in Tehran (the "nest of spies") and the interminable hostage crisis. Rockefeller at the time stressed the "patriotism", "independence" and "tolerance" by the shah towards women and religious minorities and stressed his "modernization" of Iran - this when Amnesty International and even the US State Department itself were amassing stacks of documents showing the shah as one of the most brutal rulers in modern history. But Mohammad Reza provided excellent dividends to then Chase Manhattan. Rockefeller was duly taking the interests of his shareholders into account.

In the late 1940s, the shah did not even live in Iran. He preferred New York and the French Riviera - while Iran was fermenting with democratic and nationalist ideas. These ideas led to the emergence of Mohammad Mossadegh's party, who was later elected prime minister. Mossadegh committed the enormous sin of nationalizing the Iranian oil industry - so he was duly deposed via a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) inspired coup; thus Mohammad Reza was invited to become the new CIA puppet in Iran (during the Mossadegh affair he was no more than a de luxe refugee in Europe).

During the Cold War, stressing how easily the Soviet Union had occupied Iran earlier, the CIA trained the Savak, the shah's secret police. Being Muslim but not an Arab, Mohammad Reza also rendered a great service to the US: he did not share Arab hatred of Israel. He even sold oil to Israel (one of the reasons that later fomented ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's popularity). In sum, the shah was the perfect gatekeeper of US political and economic interests in the Persian Gulf.

The shah used to be no more than a playboy. John F Kennedy, who met him on the Rivera party circuit before he became US president, thought he was a dangerous megalomaniac. As president, Kennedy anyway supported him, suggesting a little harmless reform here and there. The shah made a few cosmetic overtures towards women, for instance declaring non-obligatory the use of the chador. But this only concerned the wealthy and the Iranian upper-middle class, the small consumer society created by the multinational corporations to whom the shah opened up the country.

What the shah and his secret police did with relish was to persecute all political parties, as well as Kurds, one of the very "minorities" David Rockefeller said was protected.

And just like president George W Bush a few decades later, Mohammad Reza started to believe in his own propaganda and regard himself as king of kings. Especially because he was instrumental behind the spectacular rise in the price of oil in 1973 of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). This - the real story - will never be featured in the mainstream US media.

_{"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined." -Henry David Thoreau}

Tina February 12, 2009 - 6:21pm

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Former President Khatami to Challenge Ahmadinejad in June's Election

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