Middle East Economic Survey
VOL. LII
No 12
Khatami – Once Again With Gusto
By Jahangir Amuzegar
Dr Amuzegar is a distinguished economist and former member of the IMF Executive Board.
Ending months of whispers, rumors, and speculation Seyyed Mohammad Khatami – Iran’s former president (1997-2005) – on 8 February 2009 announced that he would again be a candidate for the presidency in June. The widely expected declaration (despite his repeated expression of preference for Mir Hossein Mussavi—the Islamic regime’s leftist and controversial wartime prime minister) generated thunderous euphoria at home and abroad. There was once again renewed celebration about a new dawn of political freedom and economic prosperity at home, and a satisfactory détente with the West, ending Iran’s current and deplorable international isolation.
The irrational exuberance, however, came to a disappointing end when the beloved candidate on 16 March suddenly withdrew from the race, arguing that he wanted to make sure that the “reformers” vote would not be split, since Mr Mussavi had also decided to enter the race. Mr Khatami’s decision was met with nationwide disappointment on the part of his daily growing group of supporters.
On further reflection, however, this disappointment needs to be tempered a bit for several reasons. To begin with, if Mr Khatami’s admirers’ claim is true, that he was indeed reluctant to enter the race to begin with but was “cajoled, begged and pressured” into running, the choice was clearly not based on the fact that he was “one of the most popular politicians in Iran” – which he is. It was because his backers believed that he was the only “reform” candidate whom the Council of Guardians would not be able to disqualify and the only “liberal” who could defeat the ultra-conservative incumbent – which he might not have. Second, the odds against a Khatami victory were quite high, and despite President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disastrous handling of the economy and confrontational conduct of foreign policy, he still is a formidable contender ‒ should he decide to run for a second term. Third, previous loud and serious complaints by presidential candidates Mehdi Karrubi and Hashemi Rafsanjani about voting frauds and irregularities in the 2005 elections give no assurance that the coming elections would have been truly free and fair in Mr Khatami’s favor – particularly because the regime does not allow international observers to be on the scene. Finally, and most significantly, even in the optimistic scenario that Mr Khatami stayed in the race to the end, other reform candidates (eg Mr Karrubi, Mr Mussavi and Akbar Aalami) would not still be there to split the votes; and even if he was able successfully to mobilize his base (ie educated urban voters, women and students) and win the election, there would be no guarantees that his next four or eight-year tenure would be any different from his first eight.
History Not On Khatami’s Side
History has not been on Mr Khatami’s side. In his first try at the presidency, he faced three major handicaps that he never managed to overcome: a shaky and precarious alliance among his various demanding backers; scant prospects for cooperation from the conservative 5th Majlis or other conservative clerical power centers – the judiciary, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the various religious institutions; and the lack of a supporting nationwide political party organization to sustain him. As a result, even after only a year in office, he faced increasing dissatisfaction among voters, who faulted him for not confronting the uncooperative establishments head on. In response to those who wanted to alter the theocratic rule, he chose a simplistic and ultimately losing strategy of playing it safe, and not ‘pushing the envelope’ too fast. He obediently played up to the Supreme Leader, ardently supported the concept of velayat-e-faqih (rule by an Islamic jurist) and steadfastly upheld the controversial Constitution – all in the hope of reciprocal favors which never came. Each concession on his part emboldened the conservative ideologues to further block his initiatives.
By the end of his first term, the Tehran Spring envisaged by his enthusiastic early supporters had actually turned into a chilling winter. The economy he himself had prescribed as “sick” was not cured, and his long-awaited Economic Rehabilitation Plan remained mostly on paper. Prospects for the “rule of law” that he had placed at the top of his priorities remained dim – although some restrictions on the media, women, and democracy advocates were considerably eased. In 2000, Mr Khatami told a friendly crowd: “I declare after three years as president that I do not have sufficient power to implement the constitution.”
On his second try in 2002, with still usual hesitation and apparent reluctance, he ran and won a second term (albeit with reduced popular support and enthusiasm) while the country was still politically divided, socially repressed, and economically fragile. In the following four years, his acts of commission and omission further disappointed and alienated almost all of his “2nd of Khordad” coalition constituents – politicized students, pro-democracy liberals, human rights activists, aspiring women, struggling secularists and reform-minded clerics, members of disadvantaged economic strata, and a critical mass of voters seeking change – one by one.
Altogether, during his eight-year tenure, Mr Khatami: failed to condemn Hezbollah thugs and Basij militia assaults on students in July 1999; caved in to the Supreme Leader’s edict (hokm-e hokumati); set aside any effort to enhance true democracy; obediently accepted the impeachment of his interior minister and the jailing of his favorite mayor of Tehran; remained silent when more than 100 liberal publications were shut down by the judiciary; tolerated the jailing of reform activists, intellectuals, and students; pooh-poohed the Nobel Peace Prize won by Iran’s Shireen Ebadi’s as “political and not significant”; called demands for a revision of the Islamic constitution “treason”; and failed to improve the plight of the disenfranchised. In his final months in office, when most of the so-called “reformers” (including his own brother) were disqualified to run in a new Majlis election, and his two bills to increase presidential powers were vetoed by the Council of Guardians, he complained in frustration that in Iran the president was a mere tadorakchi (logistics manager) and not the head of government. Thus, a presidency that had started with a deafening roar finally ended up with an unceremonious whisper. The seismic excitement generated by his earlier reformist pledges had turned into public cynicism and political apathy. At the end, he was called by some of his early backers a compromiser, an appeaser, a collaborator, an apologist for the regime, and worse.
The reasons for Mr Khatami’s fall from grace are already well known. There was little doubt from the outset that his presidency was not fated to enjoy a free ride. While his eight-year tenure changed Iran’s socio-political landscape to a measurable extent, brought some sanity to economic policies, and palpably improved the regime’s image abroad, the underlying system remained essentially intact, and the “reforms” turned out to be easily reversible. The widespread hope in the West that the mild-mannered and “enlightened” cleric advocating a Dialogue Among Civilizations instead of wars was a man eminently poised to reconcile modern democracy and Islamic culture was ultimately dashed. His oxymoronic mantra of ‘Islamic democracy’ turned out to be simply a gloss of modernity on the fusion of mosque and state. Most observers have gradually come to the conclusion that the quixotic president is a utopian dreamer who wished to combine water and fire in a never-never land of reconcilable contradictions.
The clue to Mr Khatami’s admitted failure to deliver on his promises is also not hard to find. As a seasoned politician, he knew by instinct and experience that an open challenge to the main power centers and the theocratic oligarchs in either domestic or foreign policies would have two possible outcomes. If his defiance was not backed by wide popular support, he would be impeached, dismissed, defrocked, and sent to exile if not prison. And if his fundamental challenges triggered a massive and perhaps bloody uprising that could end the clerical rule, he would never forgive himself for causing the collapse of a regime he had sworn to defend and protect. He was at no time intellectually inclined to fathom that Iran’s anachronistic and regressive closed-circuit theocratic oligarchy could not be deconstructed and reshaped by incremental steps under the current Constitution.
Why Run Again?
Now, with this performance background, and such personal convictions and attitude, one wonders why Mr Khatami wanted to run again in the first place – particularly now that Iran’s problems are much thornier than at the earlier two times. The economy is in worse shape. The country suffers from various financial sanctions. Foreign investment is virtually nil, foreign credits needed for inflated imports are scarce, and the low oil price promises a huge budget deficit for next year. Society is more polarized. The regime’s diplomatic image is badly tarnished. And popular expectations have been raised to unreachable heights. His own explanation was that “it is not possible to remain indifferent toward the fate of the revolution, and shy away from running for elections.” His remaining loyal supporters still argue that he would have been the best candidate because he is a changed man, and this time he would have been very well aware of the obstacles and impediments, and knew how to cope with them. They insisted that he would have been more effective, productive, and successful this time because he has learned from his past mistakes, and particularly because the anti-reform forces have ruined the country’s economy and damaged the regime’s diplomatic image so badly in the last four years that they would not dare challenge him the way they did before.
Yet, by all evidence, this was mostly wishful thinking. There is no doubt that Mr Khatami’s political, social, economic, and diplomatic policies would be as different from Mr Ahmadinejad’s as his governing style. Yet grave doubts still exist as to whether the substance of his governance would have been much different from his past efforts. The reasons are not farfetched. Politicians seldom change their true colors; and institutions have a life of their own. Mr Khatami may be older and wiser now, but he is neither bolder nor a born-again iconoclast. The Iranian political system, too, has not changed since he left office in 2005. The same strong power centers which he repeatedly accused of creating a crisis for him “every nine days” are, if anything, much stronger and livelier now. So is the number of his vocal opponents in the current Majlis. Ironically enough, too, while he faced a minority of orderly dissenters among voters in 1997 who simply vowed not to vote for him, he has more recently faced large crowds of wild and fanatical enemies who denounced him in vile epithets, and even threatened to kill him. An ultraconservative daily hinted that he might face a fate similar to Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto. Furthermore, he had already gone out of his way to assure the clerical leadership that he would not cross the establishment’s red lines. On his website he declared “we are working within the framework of the system, and we are loyal to the constitution and leadership.”
Mr Khatami lost his first two chances of being a strong and effective president due to the unbridgeable gap between the insatiable demands of his constituents and his own temperament and value system. His constituents wanted him to challenge the theocratic regime at any price, and he wanted to avoid such confrontation at all costs. What was asked from him by his demanding supporters was far greater than the maximum he could possibly deliver, and what he did deliver was far less than the minimum his backers were expecting to receive. There is no indication that there had been a drastic change in this equation this time around.