I see Harry’s Place is still banned in Iran. But if you are there and have a workaround, or if you are in touch with anyone there, I’d be interested in getting opinions on the victory of “moderate” and “reformist” Hassan Rouhani in Friday’s presidential election.
It seems Iranians with hopes for more democracy and personal freedom rallied to Rouhani in the closing days of the campaign, and he defeated candidates more closely aligned with the theocratic establishment.
In campaign appearances Rouhani promised to free political prisoners, to guarantee civil rights and to return “dignity to the nation”. He attracted large crowds which chanted demands to free Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, candidates in the 2009 presidential election currently under house arrest. And his victory produced what appears to be spontaneous joy among a lot of young Iranians.
On the other hand Rouhani was one of eight candidates for president approved by the Guardian Council, whose members are approved by Supreme Leader Khamenei– who also has the final say on anything Iran’s president wants to do. Of course this includes policies relating to the US, Israel, Syria, the country’s nuclear program, etc.
So I wonder if reform-minded Iranians have any reason to expect from Rouhani more than they ultimately got from another “reformist” president elected overwhelmingly in 1997– namely Mohammed Khatami.
For those who don’t recall the hopes engendered by Khatami’s election– and his failure to fulfill them– here’s something I posted about him after he left office and visited the US:
I’ll give Khatami the benefit of the doubt that he was sincere about pursuing fundamental change and greater freedoms in Iran. But his efforts were systematically undercut by Iran’s reactionary theocracy. And the worst part is that– aside from some occasional public whining– for eight years Khatami stood aside and let it happen.
Did it ever occur to him that with the vast majority of Iranians on his side, at some point he could have simply refused to follow the mullahs’ dictates? That if he was committed to genuine democracy, he could have called his supporters into the streets and stood down Ayatollah Khamenei’s lackeys and thugs?
Instead Khatami backed down time after time, crushing the hopes of those who elected him and paving the way, in large part, for his successor– the repressive hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
It’s instructive to watch these videos of Khatami appearing before a restive crowd at Tehran University toward the end of his second term as president, and to see reform-minded students vent their frustration at him.
As an al-Jazeera commentator remarked, “It seemed that the students of the conservative movement were the only ones who, uncharacteristically, defended the reformist president.”
So why is Khatami getting respectful audiences in the US? To my mind, he is even more contemptible than Ahmadinejad, who after all is what he is. Millions of Iranians trusted Khatami to be something better, but all they got was a sell-out, a weakling and a coward.
Will things be any different this time around? And if not, how will Iranians react?
