"Young People in Iran Are Ready to Burst", Time, June 2

 

… Even his closest advisers acknowledge that Khatami has a tough job ahead in running a country of 70 million people. Iran's problems are immense, despite oil exports of $19 billion last year. Unemployment stands at perhaps 20%. Riots have flared as authorities have tried to cope with a huge foreign debt and high inflation, now 25%…

Khatami's biggest challenge, however, will be managing the regime. The President's powers are subject to limits. Reflecting the political chaos of revolutionary days, Iran's system is a jumble of conflicting and confusing centers of power… Many Iranians fear that the system may ultimately paralyze Khatami. He calls himself an independent, although he is a member of a clerical group aligned with leftists, including those who held American diplomats hostage for 444 days in 1979-81…

Washington and other Western capitals will be watching Khatami closely. Some warn against making too much of his moderation. "Let's face it. It wasn't a paradise during his tenure as Culture Minister," says a Western diplomat in Tehran. But Khatami knows he will be in deep trouble if he fails to deliver, since hopes are so high. Says Tehran psychologist Shahriar Rouhani: "Young people in Iran are ready to burst…"

 

"Conflict and Contradiction", The Wall Street Journal, May 27  

TEHRAN -- Iran has elected a president with one foot in Western civilization. But, paradoxically, the result is that the West may have an even harder time reaching a political accommodation with Iran.

"It's much harder for Khatami than Nateq Nouri to talk to the United States," said one businessman with close ties to Mr. Khatami. "He won't be able to do anything for the first two years."

While Mr. Khatami avoided harsh anti-American rhetoric during the campaign, one adviser expects the president-elect to issue sharp statements soon to make clear he agrees that U.S. power in the region needs to be checked…

In addition, Mr. Khatami's upset victory means Iran will have multiple, overlapping power centers, with policies likely to lurch back and forth -- the same situation that made a U.S. dialogue with Iranian moderates backfire in the mid-1980s.

"I expect conflict and contradiction," said a diplomat here.

Toughest Test, Daily Telegraph, May 26

… But the former culture minister who was dismissed for his supposed "liberalism" faces a titanic struggle if he is to change anything. Last night, it seemed that despite the voters' apparent wish for change it was unlikely that Iran's attitude towards its own people and the surrounding world was about to change dramatically…

For the past eight years, the presidency has been held by Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, reckoned to be the cleverest politician in Iran... Even Mr Khatami's closest supporters do not rate their man above him.

Yet under Mr Rafsanjani's rule, it has yet to emerge from the moral inflexibilities of the seventh century in social affairs. Television, films, and newspapers are rigorously censored. Women must cover themselves form head to toe in dark cloth at all times. Alcohol is forbidden. It takes two to three years for a book to receive its imprimatur, usually after heavy editing. Television satellite dishes are banned. In the last year or so, the enforcement of all these edicts has been getting tougher.

 

No Evidence of Change in Policy, Associated Press, May 27 

TEHRAN - The president-elect blamed Washington on Tuesday for strained relations with Iran and said there would be no improvement unless the United States changes its policy toward his country…

But Washington doubts much will change after Khatami takes office in August.

"There's no evidence that we see of any change in the fundamental policies of that regime," White House press secretary Mike McCurry said Tuesday…

Reiterating Iran's opposition toward Israel, Khatami said Israel is "an occupier, it is racist and its illegitimate hegemony has been imposed on the Palestinian nation."

 

Iran Policy Is Unchanged, Reuter, May 27 

WASHINGTON - The United States said on Tuesday its policy toward Iran was unchanged by the election of a relatively moderate president in Teheran and that it was up to Iran to make any move to initiate a dialogue.

John Dinger, a State Department spokesman, told a regular news briefing any such dialogue would have to start with a discussion of "Iran's objectionable international behaviour." He added: "The ball is in Iran's court."

Dinger said: "Our analysis of the election and the new government in Iran will be based on Iran's international behaviour first and foremost. That involves its efforts to undermine the Middle East peace process, its efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction and its state sponsorship of terrorism."

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