December 14, 2007 3:55

Khatami's Comeback?

The buzz of Tehran this week is the rebuke of President Ahmadinejad and the hard-line policies he represents by his normally cautious, mild-mannered predecessor, Mohammed Khatami. Speaking to students at Tehran University on Student Day in Iran, where protesters recently called Ahmadinejad a "dictator," Khatami delivered backhanded criticism on various international and domestic issues, like presidential provocations that have increased international pressure on Iran and the jailing of Iranian students.

Interestingly, Khatami also issued a frontal attack on Ahmadinejad's Robin Hood economic policies, suggesting they were designed to win popularity but in fact were ill-conceived, could wreck the economy and therefore are harmful to the poorer classes Ahmadinejad claims to champion. "It is this kind of 'justice' that which makes the concept null and void of all essence," he said. "It is this 'justice' which squanders the resources of the nation and spreads poverty, the same resources which ought to be used create wealth.

Khatami said political freedom was more important than slogans about economic justice. In that vein, he sharply criticized the Guardian Council, the body that has routinely disqualified Iranian reformists from participating in elections and thereby tilted the outcome in favor of conservatives and hard-liners. "What right do some have to make decisions on behalf of the people and disqualify those trusted by the people on the grounds that their eligibility was not approved by six or 12 individuals?" Khatami asked.

Khatami, it seems, is out to change his reputation in Iran for being a well-meaning politician who lacks political courage. His remarks suggest he will take a leading role in mobilizing reformists against Ahmadinejad and his fellow hard-liners in parliamentary elections scheduled for March.

Although it has not coalesced into a formal alliance, there has been a lot of talk that Khatami will be part of a three-way anti-Ahmadinejad bloc that includes two other major figures, former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and former Speaker Mehdi Karroubi, both of whom lost to Ahmadinejad in the last presidential contest.

There's no sign that Khatami will actually be a candidate for president once again in the 2009 election, but he would stand a good chance to defeat Ahmadinejad if he did run. Despite widespread disillusionment that he did not fulfill his promise as president, Khatami remains one of the country's most popular figures. In the 1997 and 2001 elections, he captured more than 20 million votes each time in the first and only rounds of voting. By contrast, Ahmadinejad won less than 6 million votes in the first round of the 2005 election, and 17 million in his victorious runoff. Since leaving the presidency, Khatami established the International Institute for Dialogue among Cultures and Civilizations.

An Iranian leader with that kind of orientation can do a lot to improve Iranian relationships with the rest of the world. Khatami did achieve something in that respect as president, significantly mending ties with the Arab world and Europe. He failed to make much progress with the U.S., though. Despite his government's cooperation in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, President Bush decided to confront Iran as one of the three designated states in his Axis of Evil speech three months later. That confrontation continues and it's one the current Iranian president relishes.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo

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