TOWARD THE END of a lively question-and-answer session during a luncheon with faculty and invited guests at MIT on Monday, Mohammed Khatami, Iran's former president, let slip a revealing remark. He had been talking about the need for his country and the United States to follow the ``path of negotiations," observing earlier that it was harmful for Iran's hardliners to revile America as ``the Great Satan" and equally damaging for US officials to characterize Iran as part of an ``Axis of Evil." Then, as if deliberately mimicking out-of-office politicians everywhere, he said with a smile, ``You won't have me and Clinton to kick around anymore." As the people around his table at the MIT Faculty Club laughed, Khatami added: ``And Bush and Ahmadinejad are cut from the same cloth."
As that last sally was being translated, the guest of honor, laughing along with his audience, asked the professor serving as his translator not to describe what he had just said about President Bush and Iran's reactionary President Mahmoud Ahadinejad. But he knew it was too late. More to the point, Khatami's throw-away witticism placing the two serving presidents in the same category -- an indiscretion aimed at Ahmadinejad more than Bush -- reflected a central theme not only in Khatami's presentation but also in informal remarks by members of his entourage who had served in his government but were later purged by Ahmadinejad for being too liberal.
This theme was evident in what Khatami had to say about the place of religion in politics. His historical premise was that since Iran has been a traditionally religious society, the population's common goals of freedom, independence, and progress can be pursued most effectively in consonance with religion. ``The fate of our revolution," he said, ``will be determined by which reading of religion" in politics prevails.
In Khatami's stated view, there are two qualitatively different ways of interpreting religion's role in politics, one ``progressive" and the other ``backward." If the backward version is followed, he said without mentioning Ahmadinejad by name, then religion as well as democracy will suffer.
Khatami did not need to spell out for his listeners the implied distinction between his efforts to give a progressive cast to governance in Iran's Islamic Republic and Ahmadinejad's overt hostility to all signs of liberalism or secularism. Nonetheless, the former president pointed with pride at his encouragement of non governmental organizations while in office --opening up a space within which groups from Iran's civil society could coalesce and flourish. At the same time, he warned of a need to correct ``flaws in our system," particularly in a judicial system notorious for being highly politicized, hardline, and a pliant tool of the ruling clerical establishment.
Demonstrating his reputed interest in the Western Enlightenment, Khatami at one point cited the British philosopher John Locke, observing that Locke's reason for separating religion from the state was to protect religion. He invoked Locke to make the point that many Iranians who favor more secularism are ``actually strong supporters of religion" and want to preserve the sanctity of religion by keeping it separate from political affairs. Implicit in his allusion to Locke was that Ahmadinejad's crackdown on liberals and secularists was giving piety in Iran a bad name.
Khatami was given a chance at MIT to boast about his support when he was in office for information technology, biotech, and nanotechnology. But he was not let off the hook on some crucial issues. In response to a blunt question about Iran's policy toward Israel, he recognized Israel's right to exist and approved the United Nations' acceptance of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He insisted, however, on the need to end Israel's occupation of ``some territories" and asked why, if French resistance to occupation in World War II is respected, the same respect is not accorded Palestinians under occupation.
There was a tacit criticism of current Iranian meddling in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when Khatami said that if the Palestinians reach an agreement with Israel that stops short of what he called justice, ``We do not have the right to impose on others." Left unspoken was the peace-scuttling role of the current Iranian regime's backing for Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas as well as the Lebanese Shi'ite militia, Hezbollah.
Khatami's least persuasive moment came when he tried to answer a question about the undemocratic structure of the Islamic Republic's basic political institutions, particularly the principle of rule by a supreme clerical leader. He tied himself in knots trying to argue that a constitutionally legitimate council of experts can appoint the supreme leader, supervise his conduct of government, and remove him from power if need be. In reality, powerful players acting behind the scenes elevated the current mid-level cleric to his position, and though he consults with different notables representing disparate factions within the regime's inner circle, Iran's supreme leader escapes any genuine democratic accountability.
Nevertheless, Khatami's visit here has embodied the spirit of dialogue that he preaches. The decision of President Bush to grant Khatami a special diplomatic visa for his visit reflects a wise, if belated, realization that the former Iranian president represents a reformist current in Iran's politics that should not be discouraged. Ineffective as Khatami may have been at protecting and defending Iran's truly ardent reformists during his time in power, he is utterly different from Ahmadinejad.
The best hope for Iran's future and for peace in the larger Middle East may depend on the survival and nurturing of the reformist current in Iran.
