I've never liked Taheri, in any language. He is not really the sharpest tool in the shed and when he stumbles upon something, he lets his own views get in the way. Still...This adds interesting twists. You need some background to appreciate this.
Khatami is a mild mannered Jr. cleric who came to power initially on women's votes (because in his sermons he kept instructing husbands that under no circumstances is domestic violence acceptable). He also had the support of some moderate-conservatives, though the "real" opposition found him too Islamic. His first biggest contribution was freedom of the press. The real opposition in Iran used this opportunity to publish papers that were highly critical of the establishment. And when Khatami refused to shut them down and actually protected them. He later reinstated elections in many positions that were assigned by hardliners. The combination was a big threat and most critical opposition writers and some political leaders were assassinated. This pushed Khatami to the forefront of opposition, though not really by his own choice. To his credit, at least in the beginning, he rose to the occasion and won many battles against the conservatives. Rather than ideological saber rattling, he made "the rule of law" his platform. It got to the point that the conservatives accused him of trying to destroy the regime by "letting anything go" to which he answered "it is better than keeping the pressure and letting it explode". At the time he had commanding support and on more than one occasion he threatened to resign if he would not have his way. The implication being that he was the only thing between gradual change and an uprising. He also made great progress on international fronts.
On the other side you have Rafsanjani and Khamenei. Unlike Khatami these guys were part of the core of the revolutionaries. Whereas Khatami is the soft gentle philosophical type, his opposition is the hardened revolutionaries. To give you an idea, consider that Rafsanjani personally overthrew an assassination attempt on his life in his own home and was chasing after the fleeing would be assassins while he had a knife sticking out of his side. Similarly Khamenei has lost the use of one arm to a bomb that went of just a few feet from him during a government session. These are the people who fought the war with Iraq and watched US support Saddam in every way. They are not the kind that will easily back off.
Whereas Khatami has been in favor of establishing normal relations with US, Rafsanjani has not forgotten the US support for Shah, Israel, Saddam, and most importantly the many terrorist groups who wrecked havoc in Iran after the revolution. His group has always maintained that America is not interested in fair relations and is only after forcing its will upon other nations. To them, America is the Great Satan (and they mean it).
Unfortunately a number of things went wrong for Khatami. The first is that walking the fine line between the hard core opposition who really don't want the Islamic regime and the fundamentalist hard liners is very tough. Both sides wanted to see him fail. On two occasions the hard liners called his bluff and Khatami did not resign (he came very close but in the end he said that others had convinced him this would not be in the best interest of the nation). This weakened his internal support. But the biggest damage came from Bush.
The one thing that Khatami had been able to show off was the transformation of global view of Iran from the revolutionary/terrorist state to a respected nation. His massive offensive on Afghan drug lords prevented thousands of tons of narcotics to find their way into Europe. And eventually Europe began to take notice and started joint operations. He assured regional countries that Iran was not interested in exporting the revolution to them and the won enough good will that Saudi actually resisted US pressures against Iran. And he started the beginning of normalized relationship with US during Clinton administration. Continuing on the same path, Iran used its influence during the Afghanistan war to make life easy for America. People forget that prior to that war, America was pro-Taliban and regarded the Northern Alliance as the terrorist groups. It was Iran (along with Russia) that was supporting them. So Iran was a lot more credible with the Northern Alliance than their former enemy, US. Khatami also said that Iran will perform search and rescue missions for US troops in its territory. And more importantly he blocked Taliban and Al-Qaeda escape routes...and for all this Iran was included in the axis of evil. The direct result of this was that change in Iran was greatly undone and the hard liners gained better footing. It would have been very different if Bush had given Khatami something to show at home.
Anyone who thinks the hardliners cannot make real trouble for US in the region is badly mistaken. These guys may be ruthless, and to the western eye unsophisticated, but they are cunning, they are masters of directing public emotions (in many countries) to their cause, and most of all they have no fear of whatever US could do. In fact they would welcome an excuse to arm the many factions within Iraq and hostile forces to America around the globe...and this is something that Iran has not done for well over a decade.
If I were Bush, I'd start digesting what I am still trying to chew before directing efforts towards Iran.
Sun Tzu |
