Four years ago, the relatively unknown junior cleric astounded Iran and the world by scoring a both unexpected and unprecedented victory over a rival that was the favourite of the ruling conservative establishment and blessed by the all powerful leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i.

"Civil Society", "rule of law", "Independence" and "reforms" were the slogans that excited more than 20 millions of young Iranians, women, the poor and the intelligential who rushed to the polls, giving him a landslide mandate.

All the independent press that flourished after 23 May and would support reforms were shut and the few that remained or started after the clampdown "walk with sticks". The Majles, or parliament, that changed hands and fall into the reformists bucket was tamed unscrupulously by the leader and Mr. Khatami’s most powerful and influential supporters like former Interior Minister Hojjatoleslam Abdollah Noori, Guidance Minister Ata’ollah Mohajerani, Deputy Interior Minister Mostafa Tajzadeh or Sa’id Hajjarian, considered as the "architect" of the reformists victories in presidential, municipality and Legislative races among many others, are either in prison, banned from public activities or on wheel chair.

Pro-reform students leaders are jailed or silenced, Islamist-nationalists and Iran Freedom Movement groups that enjoy an overwhelming popularity among the majority of Iranians and would back Mr. Khatami despite major differences with him are outlawed, their leaders and influential members placed behind bars.

The leader-controlled Voice and Visage (Radio and Television), in full co-operation with the conservatives-controlled intelligence and security machines resumed the infamous televised confessions of dissidents in the framework of the hated and degrading "Hoviyyat" (Identity) series, starting with the controversial "interview" of Mr. Ali Afshari, a leading member of the Office for Consolidating Unity (OCU), the largest of all Iranian students organisations.

Mr. Khatami enjoys a great deal of popularity among Iranians and few doubts of his being re-elected in the forthcoming presidential elections, due 8 June, disputed with nine other runners.

Despite all these setbacks, Mr. Khatami’s four years in office has changed dramatically Iran’s political, cultural and social climate, his biggest achievement being that of having "opened" people’s mouth by setting the reforms in motion, a process that, regardless of all the obstacles created by his conservatives opponents and the personal vendetta from Ayatollah Khameneh'i, has become "irreversible" and continue unabated, albeit limping.

While on the internal scene, the clock’s hands seem to have been set back to where they were four years ago, on the international level, Mr. Khatami’s achievements of the first years of tenure have also left a sour taste.

Ties with the newly independent nations of Central Asia, some of them part of the Persian Empire and snatched by Tsarist Russia in the nineteen century are hesitant; undecided, if not non existing with Iraq, a country with which Iran fought a terrible, horrifying, bloody eight years war; low profile with Pakistan over Afghanistan and bad with Turkey because of Ankara’s close military and security co-operation with Israel, a state the Iranian clerical leaders wants to destroy.

When Hojjatoleslam Khatami, considered a modern Islamist, came to power, Islamist reformists and thinker both in Iran and some Muslim countries thought of a new dawn in this 1400 years-old faith, hoping that under his leadership, the Islamic Republic would become a model of modernity for other Muslim nations and by the same token, pave the way for reconciling Islam and the modern world.

Probably, Mr. Khatami’s biggest mistake was not only he underestimated the greed of the conservatives, but also he insisted on preserving the Iranian clumsy Constitution that places the religion above the state and the leader above the president and the clerics above other people, making the Islamic system a reminiscent of apartheid.

Also, and from the outset, he was a prisoner of the conservatives in the one hand and a loose coalition of conflicting interests and ideologies on the other.