Book review: Khatami’s Iran

Khatami’s Iran: The Islamic Republic and the Turbulent Path to Reform

Iran’s presidential elections are due in a few weeks, and they have been hijacked by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He has arranged for the two candidates who might cause him the most problems to be disqualified by the Guardian Council.

Both Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei have been told they will not be allowed to run. Mashaei’s elimination by the unelected Guardian Council was not unexpected as he had served as vice-president and chief-of-staff to President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, who has repeatedly challenged the supreme leader. Worried religious officials described Mashaei as part of a “deviant current” after he suggested that clerics might not be necessary to mediate between ordinary people and God.

But it was a shock that the council rejected Rafsanjani who has already been president twice, in 1989 and 1993; and who was a key architect of the Islamic revolution that brought Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power 34 years ago. Khamenei even owes his post of supreme leader to Rafsanjani, who, after Khomeini’s death in 1989, intervened in the deadlocked assembly of clerics charged with naming a successor and told them that he had heard Khomeini say Khamenei would be good in the job. But all this history was undone by Rafsanjani’s support of the reform movement that later rose in reaction to the harshness of the mullah’s rule, and led to Khamenei reacting so strongly against him.

Part of the reason there has been such a strong reaction is Khamenei’s desperation to avoid a repeat of the surprise when a librarian named Mohammad Khatami swept to the President’s office in 1997, leading a wave of reformists who challenged the status quo in which Khamenei, as the unelected supreme leader of the revolution, was most heavily invested.

Time magazine reported the two disqualifications recently along with the observation of Ray Takeyh, of the Council on Foreign Affairs in Washington, that “the system was absolutely terrified at the possibility of a Gorbachev phenomenon”. He was referring to Mikhail Gorbachev, who engineered the demise of the Soviet empire that its politburo selected him to protect. “Because of Khatami. They don’t want a repeat of that performance.”

Who was Khatami?

Khatami was a powerful political figure who offered a profoundly different Islamic alternative to the vision of the conservative right that dominates modern revolutionary Iran, through its alliance of clerics, the bazaar and cultural conservatives.

Khatami had a vision for reform that was pragmatic and cautious, yet explicitly rejected Westernisation and remained firmly within the overarching goals of the Iranian-Islamic culture and the principles of the 1979 revolution. Khatami’s modernity was based on enhancing the pillars of civil society and rule of law, while leaving the theocratic structure of the state’s organisation intact.

During his two terms as president from August 1997 to August 2005, Khatami was willing to see a more pluralistic society emerge in Iran, and he backed freedom of expression, tolerance and civil society, although when applied to the Islamic Republic these terms do not have the same meaning as they might in Europe or America.

In foreign affairs, Khatami wanted constructive diplomatic relations with other states including those in Asia and European Union, and he supported an economic policy in Iran that backed free-market principles and sought foreign investment. Khatami wanted rapprochement, coexistence and mutual respect among nations.

This desire for political and intellectual discourse, summarised in his book “Dialogue among Civilisations”, led Khatami to deliberately challenge the provocative ideas being promulgated by Samuel Huntingdon, who argued in his “Clash of Civilisations” that the cultural rifts in humanity are inevitable and will lead to continual wars. Khatami disagreed, and the UN declared 2001 as the Year of Dialogue Among Civilisations, on his suggestion.

“Khatami’s Iran” is a well-informed book by Ghoncheh Tazmini and is also a useful read for the non-specialist. In it, the author offers an overview of Khatami’s personal history, explores the intellectual framework of his reforms, and looks at the policies that he pursued in the social, political and foreign arenas.

The book is particularly valuable to read this summer, with the drama of the presidential election on us all. “Khatami’s Iran” is a useful reminder of the amount of political thinking that goes on behind the scenes in Iran, as this very young republic struggles to define its constitutional destiny.

All of today’s players are working within the structure of the Islamic Republic, and owe their political mandate to the success of the Iranian Revolution and their theocratic legitimacy. But it is surprising to those who do not follow Iranian affairs very much to see how much structured debate goes on within the Islamic Republic. It is a complex web of interlocking structures, and while this division of powers does not allow one person to take control of the state, it also gives room to determined politicians to achieve more than might be imagined.

That was Mohammad Khatami’s great achievement, and in contrast to the failure of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency, he offered the Iranian people a new vision and hope. This is why Khatami is so frightening to the supreme leader and why “Khatami’s Iran” is a great read.