Back to Brief on Iran
In surprisingly harsh tones, President Mohammad Khatami of Iran criticized the United States on Monday night for oppressing the people of Iran and vowed that they would never be enslaved again.
Khatami's attack on the United States came in the middle of a ... sermon delivered to thousands gathered at the tomb of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini...
Khamenei also denied suggestions from abroad and in the Iranian press that Khatami's remarks signaled that Iran may be moving toward a rapprochement with the United States, calling it "tricky propaganda" designed to destroy the unity of Iran's revolution.
Khatami has often stated that it is Khamenei who has more authority in Iran. And in his sermon on Monday night, Khatami may have been trying to signal that whatever his personal views the unity of Iran's Islamic republic comes first….
[In a statement, the NCR stated: "For now, Khatami is keeping his head down to let the storm pass, a typical ploy by the mullahs. But the turn of events will only lead to further power struggle and even greater storms which will shake the foundations of the mullahs' illegitimate regime."]
Congress Leery of Softening Line on Iran,
Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 18
Congress already is showing signs of balking at any softening of the nation's hard-edged policy toward Iran, and a test of Capitol Hill sentiment is likely to occur soon.
Since Iranian President Muhammad Khatami spoke to the American people earlier this month via a CNN interview and word surfaced that the Clinton administration had secretly proposed talks with the previously pariah regime, a number of legislators, both Democrats and Republicans, have expressed decided wariness….
The measure of congressional sentiment is certain to emerge soon after federal legislators return Jan. 27 from their mid-session break.
That is about the time the administration
is expected to decide whether to impose sanctions on France and Russia
for entering into a $2 billion deal with Iran. The deal, to develop Iranian
natural gas fields, appears to run afoul of economic sanctions imposed
by Congress last year….
Playing Good Mullah/Bad Mullah, The San Diego Union-Tribune, January 16
[Excerpts from an article by Sarvnaz Chitsaz, the U.S. Representative of the National Council of Resistance.]
After all the speculation in Washington and other Western capitals about whether Iranian President Mohammad Khatami will bring about positive change or not, his much trumpeted interview with CNN last week was anti-climatic.
The ensuing conciliatory response by officials was thus all the more bewildering. Apparently, the administration is willing to play the good cop/bad cop game, mullah-style, invented by Khomeini to lure the U.S. into the Irangate debacle…
… Khatami rejected all forms of dialogue with the United States government. He defended the regime's policy of export of terrorism and fundamentalism, just as he defended the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy…
Khatami underscored the regime's opposition to the Middle East peace process and its support for groups opposing peace. Then he denied Tehran’s involvement in terrorism altogether...
Some officials have reiterated it is deeds, not words, that matter. Since Khatami's election in May, the state media has announced that 138 people have been either stoned to death or hanged in public. (In all, the regime announced 200 executions in 1997, seven of them stoning.) 24 dissidents were assassinated abroad… Nor have concerns about Tehran’s growing stockpile of weapons of mass destruction been alleviated….
Then and now, the West has failed to comprehend that the mullahs’ regime is based on the principle of Velayat-e Faqih, meaning guardianship of the pre-eminent religious jurist, whose powers are absolute... The theocratic regime does consist of several factions, but their infighting is about power, not moderates versus radicals. There is an absolute consensus among all of the ruling factions on domestic suppression and export of terrorism.
Even so, their rigid control over the society is slipping, and public discontent is on the rise… There has been a surge in the popularity of the resistance movement, which seeks a secular, democratic and pluralist Iran. Maryam Rajavi has come to symbolize the anti-thesis to the mullahs' fundamentalism since elected as president for the transitional period by the National Council of Resistance.
It would be a strategic mistake for the U.S. to pin its hope for change on a faction or individual within the regime. Change will come to Iran, but not from the mullahs. After 19 years of religious fascism, a mullah is a mullah to the Iranian people.
For Khatami, Rafsanjani or Khamenei, the first genuine step toward moderation requires rejecting Velayat-e Faqih. That is tantamount to rejecting the mullahs’ rule altogether. The Iranian people will never accept anything less than the mullahs' return to the mosques, to be replaced by a government chosen in free, fair elections. In short, they want the overthrow of the ruling theocracy.