Khatami Positioning for Iran's Uncertain Future

It seems the immediate past president of Iran is seizing the opportunity to position himself as a moderate Muslim leader in the eyes of the west. His goal? Clearly, gaining favor at this point in time is a strategic move if, in fact, the western powers are serious about the idea of supporting regime change in Iran.

As I said yesterday, the question is less about if there should be regime change, but rather which group will step up to take the throne.

Khatami seems, at first glance, to be the most probable and best suited candidate, both in retrospect of his past leadership of the country and especially given the sound bytes he's tossing to the press these days. For example:

He said a transformation in the Muslim world could pave the way for setting up "democratic governments that pursue national interests and create the grounds for achieving greater science and technology."

Khatami has always publicly been an opponent of nuclear weapons development, and big proponent of nuclear power. However, the biggest issue I have with Khatami is the mere fact that Iran didn't get to where it's at in nuclear development in the few months that Ahmadinejad's been in power. Which is to say, a lot of what we're dealing with today started on Khatami's watch.

Second, while it is true that when Khatami first won the presidency in '97 and did so with an overwhelming 70% of the vote, he nevertheless was only allowed to run because he was approved by the Ayatollah. Iran has never seen a free election, and so to assume that any president actually had the support of the people is to ignore the fact that the people didn't have a free pool of candidates from which to chose.

That said, what I like about Khatami is that he seems to be the most progressive minded of any Irani politician that's been produced in the last twenty five years. It also seems possible to me that many of the changes he would have liked to put in place could be made if Iran were a true democracy.

I haven't fully made my mind up on this one. It will be interesting to observe the developments of the coming weeks.