And like so many times before, Khatami spoke on his return of his trip’s achievements and of the economic benefits Iran will gain thanks to the close cooperation between Iran and the country he had visited (Malaysia, in this case).

The way Khatami has behaved recently has not only led to his losing popularity among ordinary Iranians, even his closest allies in the reformist camp have been unable to hide their anger at what they consider to be his almost total betrayal of the slogans that brought him to power for the first time back in 1997.

The biggest and most influential reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF), held its annual congress in Tehran in mid-July. In that meeting, it turned out that Abdi was not the only leading reformist to ask Khatami to make up his mind. Most IIPF politburo members were seen to endorse this view, believing that by remaining in power without being able to carry out his reform program would undermine not only his presidency but also the entire reform movement.

It has to be said, first of all, that Khatami was not a radical before the Islamic revolution, nor did he turn into a revolutionary firebrand after the revolution took place. He came from a privileged background, of "Shiite notable" stock. His was the type of family that provided universities and religious colleges with brilliant scholars who went on to lead the Shiite movement in Lebanon (Moosa Sadr), raised the banner of democracy in Iraq (Mohammad Baqr as-Sadr), and even stood up bravely to Ayatollah Roohollah Khomeini’s excesses (Reza Sadr).

But despite the cloak and turban, religious schooling was only a passing phase in Khatami’s life. It is easy to feel the difference between him and, say, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He is more of a university scholar than a religious one: He is polite, reserved and weighs his words carefully. Tranquillity and gentleness are two of his most prominent attributes.

An American correspondent who once met with Rafsanjani and then with Khatami after he was elected remarked that while the former president was aloof, arrogant and evasive, Khatami behaved like a perfect gentleman. He replied to all the questions put to him and made the correspondent feel that she was speaking to an intellectual who had managed to combine the best of secular and religious virtues. He was, she said, Utopian.

Since Khatami was no revolutionary, he was not jailed under the Shah’s rule. In fact, he was drafted into the army as a second lieutenant after he graduated from Esfahan University.

After obtaining his masters degree (in education), Khatami travelled to Germany where he was appointed by Ayatollah Mohammad Baheshti (revolutionary Iran’s first chief justice) as director of the Iranian Islamic Cultural Centre in Hamburg.

When the Islamic revolution broke out in Iran, Khatami was not even in the country. He did not take part in the mass executions that took place of thousands of the Shah’s followers. After returning to Iran, Khatami refused to serve in the government. Soon afterward, though, Khomeini appointed Khatami to head "Keyhan", Iran’s largest media organisation.

Khatami accepted the position and spent several years encouraging young intellectuals to come and work for him. Those young men form today’s intellectual elite in Iran; men like prominent journalist Masha’allah Shamsolvaezin, Presidential Secretary Mohammad Ali Abtahi, and leading Islamic philosopher and thinker Abdolkarim Soroush.

Khatami then moved on from "Keyhan" to the Information Ministry*, where he accomplished a revolution within just a few short months.

He removed the sword of censorship that was poised above the heads of Iran’s writers, intellectuals and artists. Under his supervision, hundreds of books, as well as dozens of newspapers, were published. The Information Ministry took a special interest in music and the cinema. Movie directors like Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Abbas Kiarostam, and Darius Mehrjoo’i were so well taken care of that Khatami was called the Messiah of Iranian cinema.

Three years after Khomeini’s demise, Khatami left the Ministry. The reason: his refusal to carry out Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i’s orders to impose censorship on newspapers, books and artistic works.

For the following five years, Khatami sought refuge from the hubbub of politics in the Iranian National Library.

In fact, Khatami never chose to contest the presidential election in 1997. Leaders of the reformist movement, who are his biggest critics today, made the choice for him.

After his 1997 victory, Khatami said: "We never thought we were going to win. All we wanted to do was deliver a message to those in power that there was a current of opinion that had to be emancipated."

This mistaken assumption was also shared by millions of Iranians who voted for him and expected him to achieve in a short period of time what the revolution had failed to achieve in over 20 years.

During fours years that constituted his first term in office, Khatami had to face a new conservative-instigated crisis almost every week. This taught him lessons that he was determined to make use of in his second term. His problem though is that his supporters have lost patience and the Iranian people have lost hope in change ever taking place.

When a statement by the Revolutionary Guards describes the reformists as "George W. Bush’s foot soldiers," and when the judiciary orders the banning of "No Rooz", the mouthpiece of the IIPF and the arrest of its editor in chief, can it be said that the lessons Khatami learned from his first term will have an effect in stopping the conservative campaign?

According to Abbas Abdi, what is taking place in Iran today is a tragedy. The conservatives are fighting Khatami and his supporters with guns and bullets, while the president tries with words and smiles to disarm them.

Editor’s note: Dr Alireza Nourizadeh is a prolific commentator and analyst of Iranian situation, as well as a poet and novelist. A one-time political editor of the Tehran daily Ettela’at in Tehran, he is an Arabist and a Director at the London-based Centre for Arab-Iranian Studies and the editor of its Arabic-language newsletter Al-Mujes an-Iran.

This commentary was published by The Daily Star, Beirut’s English language newspaper on 30 July