THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XI, Issue # 89, March 24, 2009
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
KHATAMI IS JUST AHMADINEJAD WITH A SILVER TONGUE
By Dr. Michael Rubin
MOHAMMAD KHATAMI'S CALL FOR DIALOGUE BETWEEN IRAN & THE WEST: TACTICAL & INSINCERE -- KHATAMI'S
ANTI-SEMITISM, REJECTIONISM, PRACTICE OF CENSORSHIP & OPPRESSION, ACTIVE SUPPORT FOR ISLAMIC TERRORISM,
COLLABORATION WITH ISLAMISTS, & PURSUIT OF AN IRANIAN NUCLEAR MILITARY CAPABILITY INDICATE THAT HE IS NO
ADVOCATE OF TOLERANCE, OPEN-MINDEDNESS, FREE THOUGHT, HUMAN RIGHTS, CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY, &
LASTING PEACE BETWEEN ISLAM & THE WEST
FULL STORY:
On March 25, 2009, former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami will speak in Australia at La Trobe University's
Centre for Dialogue. According to Centre Director Joseph Camilleri, Khatami's legacy was significant because he
"articulated a powerful and coherent message in defence of democracy and human freedom."
"Just as significant, though generally ignored by the Bush administration, was Khatami's opening to the West,"
Camilleri argues. "He pursued an active diplomacy with western Europe, visited the U.S.A., strongly condemned
terrorism, mended fences with Arab neighbours, and seemed prepared to curb Iran's uranium enrichment program."
No doubt Khatami will draw headlines, but the Khatami described by Camilleri is a myth, and a dangerous one at
that.
True, when Khatami emerged on the world stage, he was a breath of fresh air. Diplomats applauded when, after his
swearing-in on August 4, 1997, he declared: "We are in favour of a dialogue between civilisations and a detente in
our relations with the outside world." Khatami became the toast of European capitals, with Prime Ministers tripping
over themselves to host him in their capitals.
On March 9, 1999, during his first visit to Europe, Khatami told the Italian Parliament:
"Tolerance and exchange of views are the fruits of
cultural richness, creativity, high-mindedness, and
harmony. One must recognise this opportunity."
Back in Iran, though, his message was different. He banned Israeli and Jewish non-government organisations from
participating in the Tehran preparatory meeting ahead of the UN Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination,
Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance.
Then, speaking to Iranian television on October 24, 2000, he declared:
"If we abide by human laws, we should mobilise
the whole Islamic world for a sharp confrontation
with the Zionist regime. If we abide by the
Koran, all of us should mobilise to kill."
Alas, such incitement was not mere rhetoric, and to suggest, as Camilleri does, that Khatami condemns terrorism is,
at best, half true. Khatami may have offered condolences after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in New York
and Washington, but the bipartisan 9/11 Commission subsequently found that his government had granted transit
across Iran to at least eight of the 14 Saudi hijackers who had trained in Afghanistan's al-Qa'ida camps.
Nor is the problem simply passive support for terrorism.
Soon after U.S., Australian, and European diplomats brokered a ceasefire between Israelis and Palestinians in
December, 2001, Iranian officials loaded 50 tonnes of advanced weaponry aboard the Karine-A, a Palestinian
freighter.
Eight years later, Khatami continues to side with rejectionists. In a speech on December 28, 2008, he berated
"Arab countries (that) signed treaties with Israel".
While proponents of dialogue latch on to Khatami's call, the former President's own aides depict his dialogue as
tactical, and insincere. Speaking on June 14, 2008, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, Khatami's former spokesman, told a
university audience: "We had one overt policy, which was one of negotiation and confidence-building, and a
covert policy, which was continuation of the activities."
At a campaign stop in Bushehr on March 8, 2009, Khatami himself angrily took on those who would credit
incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for Iran's nuclear success.
"Do you really think that the technological advances in the nuclear field only have been reached during the last
couple of years?" he asked.
Khatami has a point. He deserves credit for Iran's nuclear and military advance. European officials eagerly
answered Khatami's call for dialogue. While Germany said discussions would tackle difficult issues such as
human rights and nuclear proliferation, trade became the basis for engagement, in the belief that integrating Iran
into the world economy would moderate the country. Between 2000 and 2005, the European Union nearly tripled
its trade with the Islamic Republic. The Khatami administration injected about 70 per cent of the hard currency
windfall into nuclear and military programs.
The idea that Khatami was "prepared to curb uranium enrichment" is counterfactual nonsense.
It was under Khatami's watch that the Islamic Republic built a covert enrichment facility at Natanz, acknowledged
by Khatami only after satellite photos confirmed its existence.
And, while many Bush administration critics embraced a November, 2007, National Intelligence Estimate that
found the Iranian government had ceased work on a nuclear weapons program, they ignored the same document's
finding that, at the height of Khatami's dialogue, Iranian scientists laboured secretly to build a nuclear warhead.
Khatami is credited with tolerance, during his tenure as Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, but he censored
more than 600 books and banned several dozen publications.
Ironically, as President, he banned the memoir of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's deputy, Ayatollah Hossein Ali
Montazeri, because Montazeri described the purge of several thousand political prisoners in 1988, a year in which
Khatami, as a member of the ruling council, would have, at least administratively, aided the executions. Montazeri
remains under house arrest.
More broadly, recourse to capital punishment -- including against homosexuals and minors -- increased under
Khatami. While Khatami's admirers outside Iran praise his defence of human freedom, those in Iran are more cynical.
Towards the end of Khatami's Presidency, a joke circulated in Tehran: On her wedding night, an Iranian woman told
her husband that their marriage was actually her second. "Don't worry," she assured him. "I'm still a virgin." "How
can that be?" her husband asked. "Well, my first husband was like Khatami. He kept promising to do it, but, eight
years later, he hadn't done anything."
Many of Khatami's foreign supporters suggest he was sincere in his desire for reform, but Iran's power circles
constrained him. Iranian civil society is not so sure.
On February 27, 2009, Iranian civil rights activist Emad al-Din Baghi recounted how "Khatami forgot all his promises
of reforms" on his election.
Answering hardline critics in Qom last month, Khatami affirmed that his support for the revolution trumped any
other principle. So much for the "defence of democracy".
It is easy to be fooled by appearances and see Khatami as a moderate, when juxtaposed with firebrand President
Ahmadinejad. Alas, the differences are only of style, not substance. Take the Holocaust: Ahmadinejad proudly
questions it; Khatami simply invites Holocaust revisionists such as Frederick Toben, a retired German school
teacher living in Australia, to Tehran to present his ostensible findings that the Auschwitz death camp was too
small to conduct mass killing of Jews.
As University of Virginia Political Scientist George Michael noted in a 2007 Middle East Quarterly article,
"it was under Khatami that Iranian policy shifted from anti-Zionism to unabashed anti-Semitism".
Dialogue is not always a panacea. Not every partner is sincere. While some are too radical or violent to engage,
the more dangerous are those such as Khatami, who have mastered the art of public relations. They should be
judged on their actions, however, rather than their rhetoric.
To do otherwise is simply to become a useful idiot enabling the furtherance of values and actions antithetical to
liberalism, tolerance, and constitutional democracy.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Middle East & the Problem of Iran
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Michael Rubin, a Ph.D. in History (Yale University, 1999) and a specialist in Middle Eastern politics, Islamic culture and Islamist
ideology, is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly, a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, and a resident
scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Dr Rubin is author of Into the Shadows: Radical
Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001) and is co-author, with Dr. Patrick Clawson,
of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Dr. Rubin served as political advisor to the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Baghdad (2003-2004); staff advisor on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense
(2002-2004); visiting lecturer in the Departments of History and International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(2001-2002); visiting lecturer at the Universities of Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan (2000-2001); Soref
Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1999-2000); and visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Yale
University (1999-2000). He has been a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Leonard Davis Institute at Hebrew
University, and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.
The foregoing article by Dr. Rubin was originally published in The Australian, March 25, 2009, and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(Article URL: http://www.meforum.org/article/2106/khatami-is-just- ahmadinejad-with-a-silver-tongue)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
March 24, 2009
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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