We appreciate the...opinions of reformists, like Khatami, and their liberal spirit that allows for realistic communication on all issues...The reformative Islamists [like Khatami] are the best option. However it will not satisfy us much even if they do attain power at the forthcoming spring elections, because they are a wingless dove. Whether or not an agreement is to be reached, it must be reached with the true people in power. —Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), February 10, 2009.
Perhaps Al-Rashed is right: If Mohammed Khatami wins the June election, he might wield less power than he did during the last years of his presidency. By 2004, conservatives had regained control of the parliament, while the Council of Guardians and Supreme Leader Khamane'i had blocked all of Khatami's reform initiatives.
Khatami never had the stomach to confront the hardliners. During the summer of 1999, when Tehran University students erupted in protest, he failed to challenge the regime's muzzling of student leaders. To be fair, he was cornered: after high ranking officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards threatened to move against him, Khatami backed the regime. Clearly, he was not ready to defy his rivals, an act that might have precipitated a bloody confrontation whose inevitable victor would be the regime.
This legacy—coupled with continued disarray in the reformist camp—suggests that if Khatami is reelected president, he might lack the domestic political cover to seal a deal with the US. That is why Al-Rashed would rather have the US negotiate with Iranian leaders who represent what he calls "true power."
This argument makes sense. But I would add two caveats:
1) Khatami will not be doing the negotiating. Ultimately, a hardline figure, handpicked by the Supreme Leader, will take the lead.
2) Iran's hardliners are committed to a revolutionary doctrine, one of whose central props is anti-Americanism. It is hard to see Ahmadinejad or his allies jettisoning this principle for a "grand bargain" that would normalize relations with the US while imposing strict controls on Iran's capacity to independently enrich uranium.
Khatami would probably have no such inhibitions. Indeed, he and his reformist allies see reconciliation with the US as essential to their drive for political reform. This is precisely why hardliners do not want reformists to take credit for opening relations with Washington. They fear that any such move would strengthen reformists while exposing the Islamic Republic to the dangers of American cultural, social and political influence.
If Khatami is elected, Iran will have a thoroughly decent, professor-thinker-president akin to our own, but whose wings would remain clipped. If Ahmadinejad wins, Iran will get a tough political operator with hardline "revolutionary" credentials, but whose bombastic language and economic fumbling has alienated some of own allies—while furthering isolating Iran. Would this vulnerable hardliner offer Washington a preferable interlocutor? Your guess is as good (or perhaps almost as good) as mine!
Daniel Brumberg is an associate professor of government and director of democracy and governance studies at Georgetown University. He is also a senior nonresident fellow at the Project on Middle East Democracy. His work focuses on political, social and economic change in the Middle East and wider Muslim World.
