KHATAMI WARNS US AGAINST CHANGING IRANIAN, IRAQI REGIMES
By Safa Haeri*
PARIS 24 July (IPS) Iranian embattled President Mohammad Khatami accused the
United States Administration of a "calculated campaign to provoke mass
insurrection in Iran" and warned Bush Administration against "efforts
to change Iranian and Iraqi regimes".
"Iran's leadership would not bow to US threats and insults", he said, speaking Tuesday to journalists in Kula Lumpur, at the end of his official visit to this federated kingdoms, referring the President George Bush’s last statement about Iran, in which he voiced support for Iranian people’s call for changes and rejecting non-elected leaders.
Mr. Khatami’s comments come as the "Washington Post" reported the same day that the US Government had largely abandoned attempts at dialogue with him and official reformers, preferring instead to encourage popular support for democracy among the Iranian people.
The newspapers quoted unidentified American officials indicating that the Bush Administration has decided to drop the policy of engagement supported by the EU and former US Democrat Administration of president Bill Clinton, and instead adopt an open encouragement to new forces inside Iran seeking changes in the regime.
Though he did not identify whom exactly Washington intends to support, but informed sources said a new popular force, tentatively referred to as the "third current", and formed of former supporters of Mr. Khatami, among them some present and former MMs (members of the Majles), journalists, intellectuals, scholars, as well as some nationalist-religious leaders, might have caught the attention of Mr. Bush’s national security team, chief among them Mr. Zalmay Khalizad, the Afghan-born adviser for Iranian, Afghan and Central Asian affairs.
Mr Khatami and his pro-reform supporters in government "are too weak, ineffective and not serious about delivering their promises", one official told the paper, adding: "We have made a conscious decision to associate with the aspirations of the Iranian people".
Informed Iranian source told Iran Press Service that in a letter to his Iranian counterpart, President Bush had urged him to stop getting close to the conservatives and instead, apply his promised reforms, if he wanted to benefit from American support, but Mr. Khatami preferred not to take it seriously, being assured by Iranians in the US that the State Department is firmly behind him.
"In the last two Iranian presidential elections... the vast majority of the Iranian people voted for political and economic reform," Mr Bush stated. "Yet their voices are not being listened to by the un-elected people who are the real rulers of Iran", Mr. Bush said in his 12 July statement, flatly rejected by Iranian leaders, including Mr. Khatami, as a "gross and flagrant intervention in Iranian domestic affaires".
"Uncompromising, destructive policies have persisted... Meanwhile, members of the ruling regime and their families continue to obstruct reform while reaping unfair benefits. Iran's people... have no better friend than the United States of America", Mr Bush said.
White House’s national security team advised the dramatic change of policy about Iran on the basis of similarities between the Iranian political situation with that of former Yugoslavia under the dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic, meaning the existence of a dynamic, unyielding and huge civil dissidence against the clerical rulers an American analyst close to the White House and asking for anonymity.
Mr Bush's statement caused anger and support inside Iran, dismaying conservatives who, on orders from the leader, orchestrated an anti-American rally last Friday, but welcoming by some "non official" reformers who are struggling against a growing repression staged by the hard-liners.
"More than 27 millions Iranians voted for Mr. Khatami in the last presidential elections, hoping he would stand to the conservatives and carry on the reforms he had promised in his first campaign for presidency, but he deceived everyone except a handful of cronies, most of them former leftists", said Mr. Qasem Sho’leh Sa’di, an outspoken scholar and former MM, who repeats that Mr. Khatami’s reforms are dead.
An opinion poll conducted by the Islamic Guidance Ministry showed that only 6 per cent of Iranians are satisfied with the present system and 94 per cent not satisfied.
Among this 94 per cent, 49 per cent said they want smooth and gradual changes while 45 per cent expressed radical changes, according to the poll, which was kept secret from the public.
"Now, Mr. Khatami has three choices: Not to pay attention to what the American are doing and persist as a powerless president; get closer to the conservatives and close his political career at the end of his present mandate or to resign", Iranian political analysts said.
In his press conference, Mr. Khatami hinted clearly that he would not resign and by using same language of that of Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the lamed and unpopular Iranian leader, indicated he would side with the conservatives.
"By clinching to his post, Mr. Khatami is going the same way down as his predecessor. But unlike Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who, despite being much hated by the public, continue to play an important role in the Iranian political theatre, mostly thanks to his immense wealth and also because of his special relationship with Mr. Khameneh'i, Mr. Khatami lacks these important assets and would go down the sink once his term is finished", one analyst pointed out.
Mr. Khatami also accused the US of warmongering and warned that America
should abandon its plans to attack Iraq, saying "We wish to caution the
great powers against further interference in the region and against the
exacerbation of the flames of war. We live in a very frightening situation
today. We have never witnessed war being so much promoted in the US", he
said.
"The current Bush administration's policy of a sharp divide between good and evil nation states was neither in the interest of the US nor in the interest of today's world", Mr. Khatami argued.
Speculation has grown over an imminent attack on Iraq by the US after reported plans for an attack on Saddam Hussein's regime were leaked to the New York Times newspaper.
With Afghanistan now under a pro-American government and American forces surrounding Iran from all sides except the tiny portion of border with Iraq under the control of Saddam Hoseyn, the Iranian clerical leadership fears it is next in the eye of the cyclone, once Baghdad changes regime and joins other pro-west’s governments of the region.
In a pointed reference to US hopes to depose Mr. Hoseyn and impose "regime change" in Iraq, Mr Khatami said that any such action could destabilise the entire region, with unpredictable results.
"No one has the right to decide for the people of Iraq. The people of Iraq should decide for themselves", he said, adding that Tehran's own disputes with Baghdad notwithstanding, "We condemn any foreign interference in Iraq".
Mr. Khatami condemned American’s plans to attack Iraq as Arab newspapers reported that Qusay Hoseyn, the younger son of the Iraqi dictator who runs the country’s feared secret services and the powerful Presidential Special Guards had secretly visited Iran, discussing the creation of a possible anti-American front including Syria and "Palestine".
As Iran denied the visit, attributing it to "malevolent Zionist propaganda", Saddam’s other son, Oday, warned Iran against co-operation with the United States in its efforts to topple his father, and Iraqi media disclosed the arrest of Iranian "spies" dispatched to Iraq to help Americans.
The Iranian President repeated Iranian usual accusations of American "one sided" Middle East policy of colluding with Israel in the "genocide" against the Palestinians.
The tougher US position puts it at odds with the European Union, which favour "critical engagement" with Iran, in the hope of encouraging reform, and have been negotiating a trade pact with Tehran.
A five-member European Parliament team just ended a five days visit to Iran, expressing "satisfaction" from their talks with Iranian officials in the one hand and "disagreements" with the American policies towards the Islamic Republic on the other.
"We believe engaging with the reformers is the best way forward and we still do" a British Foreign Office source said last night. ENDS US ABANDON KHATAMI 24702
*With reports from the Guardian’s Simon Tisdall