 | Middle East Forum | ||
| MEF Home Research & Writings Middle East Quarterly | |||
Related Khatami | |||
 Send |  RSS |
Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami will speak at La
Trobe University's Centre for Dialogue tomorrow. 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 US, 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 September11, 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 US, 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 last year, 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 June14 last year, 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 this year, 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 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 this year, 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 schoolteacher
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 democracy.
Michael Rubin is editor of the Middle East Quarterly and
a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Related Topics: Iran
To subscribe to the MEF mailing lists, go to http://www.meforum.org/list_subscribe.php
You may post or forward this text, but on condition that you
send it as an integral whole, along with complete information about its
author, date, publication, and original URL.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment