Iran’s Khatami will soon be missed by the West
Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: One doesn’t have to be very old to recollect the emergence and blossoming of Iran’s reform movement. In the May 1997 presidential election, when many observers had reached the foregone conclusion that the establishment confidant, conservative cleric Ali Akbar Nategh-Nouri, would secure an easy victory courtesy of gerrymandering and voter fraud, a reformist underdog turned out to be a dark horse and baffled the world. Mohammad Khatami, who was previously minister of culture between 1982 and 1992 and little known internationally, bagged 69.6% of the votes in a presidential contest that saw a turnout of 79.92%, a figure not chronicled since the Iranian Revolution. Khatami’s ascendancy was a...
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