President Hojjat-ol eslam Mohammad Khatami's much-acclaimed television interview with CNN, broadcast on Jan. 7, was hyped by CNN as presenting a "new opening" of the US.-Iran relationship. A careful analysis of what Mr. Khatami actually said, however, shows that his speech was aimed not at restoring diplomatic relations with the U.S., or even in promoting closer ties between Americans and Iranians, but in getting the U.S. trade embargo and sanctions legislation lifted.
Mr. Khatami complained bitterly that the U.S. has adopted "a hostile policy against Iran" ever since the Revolution. "They have tried to inflict economic damage upon us, a clear example of which is the D'Amato act which represents a continuation of cold war mentality." He went on: "There must first be a crack in this wall of mistrust to prepare for a change and create an opportunity to study a new situation."
In his promotion of cultural exchanges between the two counries - scholars, writers, artists, and tourists - Mr. Khatami is clearly seeking to create a lobby in the United States that will carry the message of the Tehran regime back to Washington. And that message is simple, and it was stated repeatedly by Mr. Khatami himself: the Islamic Republic is seeking an end to the U.S. trade embargo, and an end to the D'Amato sanctions, before it will even consider a dialogue about the issues Americans care about most: terrorism, Iran's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, and the Islamic Republic's violent opposition of the Middle East peace process.
The unregenerated radical language used by Mr. Khatami to describe Israel ("a racist terrorist regime") and his bald dismissal of U.S. charges concerning Iranian terrorism ("supporting peoples who fight for the liberation of their land is not, in my opin ion, supporting terrorism") shows that Mr. Khatami does not differ in any significant way from the other top leaders of the Tehran regime. Indeed, his repeated references to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i provide clear proof that his speech was carefully vetted before it was delivered, and that his initiative was approved at the highest levels of the Iranian regime.
For many months, Western commentators have expressed hope that Mr. Khatami might present a "new face" of the Islamic Revolution, something of an "Ayatollah Gorbachev." His performance on CNN shows clearly that this is not the case. Far from the self-criticism of Mr. Gorbachev and his foreign policy advisors, Mr. Khatami stated that everything the Islamic Regime has done over the past seventeen years has been right and wise, and that Iran's current economic woes are just the result of U.S. "hostility." We have heard the same rhetoric from Rafsanjani, Khamene'i, Nateq-Nour, and others for years.
Even on the domestic front, where hopes among Iranians had been the highest, things have continued much the same as before. In 1997, scores Iranians were stoned to death on charges such as adultery. Private parties continued to be broken up by the authorities. Opposition leader Ibrahim Yazdi was jailed for two weeks in December; Grand Ayatollah Montazeri was beaten by thugs in November and has since disappeared from circulation, sending a strong message to other clerics who might raise their voice against the excesses of the regime.
Iranians voted for change in May 1997. Mr. Khatami's performance on CNN shows that instead they have gotten more of the same.
The Foundation for Democracy in Iran is a private, non-profit corporation registered in the State of Maryland. Contact: Kenneth R. Timmerman, Executive Director. Tel: (301) 946-2918. Fax: (301) 942-5341. FDI materials, including the FDI Newswire, are available free-of-charge via the Internet at http://www.iran.org