Khatami, Nasrallah Make Common Cause

LONDON: Last year, only weeks before Mohammad Khatami consented to run for re-election, many associates of the reformist Iranian president were convinced he would not seek a second four-year term in office, having, in his own words, had a crisis thrust on him on each and every day of the first.

Khatami had won a landslide in the 1997 elections. The conservative establishment?s candidate, Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, had been so confident of victory that he even selected members of his would-be Cabinet ahead of the polls, only to end up with a humiliatingly low percentage of the popular vote.

The conservatives lost no time exacting revenge. From their entrenched positions of power, they immediately began a systematic campaign aimed at sabotaging the political agenda of Khatami and his reformist supporters.

Khatami was thus presented with a succession of critical challenges: the murders of prominent political figures and intellectuals, masterminded by senior members in the Intelligence Ministry; the removal from office and subsequent imprisonment of key reformist politicians, such as Interior Minister Abdollah Nouri and Tehran mayor Gholam-Hussein Karbaschi; the attempted assassination of the architect of his reform program, Saeed Hajjarian; the brutal suppression and intimidation of the pro-Khatami student movement; the closure of some 80 newspapers and periodicals; and the jailing of numerous activists associated with the reformist Second of Khordad Movement.

In March 2001, some three months before the presidential election date, Khatami was sending out mixed messages about whether he would run for a second term. By April, to the enormous relief of his many supporters, he had decided to do so. A number of developments took place in the course of those weeks that persuaded him to seek re-election. One of them was a meeting with Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, secretary-general of Hizbullah.

While Hizbullah has always been closely tied to Iran ? in particular to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei?s office and the Revolutionary Guards ? its young leader did not initially enjoy unanimous support within the Iranian establishment. Many conservative clerics and officials sided with Sheikh Subhi Toufeili when he launched his 1997-98 breakaway movement in the Bekaa Valley. In contrast, the reformists and the so-called ?Islamic left,? who at the time were in the process of assuming executive power after Khatami?s election triumph, had backed Nasrallah from the outset. Indeed, his position within his organization was not dissimilar to Khatami?s within Iran.

Similar divisions had been noticeable earlier, when various candidates were vying to succeed the previous Hizbullah leader Sayyed Abbas Musawi, after he was assassinated by Israel in February 1992. The Iranian Embassy in Beirut backed Nasrallah, while Khamenei?s representative favored figures associated with the Hizbullah ?old guard.?

After Nasrallah?s election, he instituted a number of important reforms that hastened Hizbullah?s transformation from an underground paramilitary movement into a modern political party with a diversity of tasks in the military, security, social, medical, cultural, financial, information and other fields. But these moves did not enjoy the support of many quarters in Tehran, and it was only after Khatami?s election that Iran took positive steps to bolster Nasrallah?s leadership.

Khatami had first met Nasrallah some 18 months before his election as Iranian president, during a 1996 visit to Lebanon to deliver a series of lectures on the subject of democracy, social justice and the relationship between culture and politics. The two men were reportedly greatly impressed by each other, though neither could have appreciated the significance of their encounter at the time.

During his first term as president, Khatami was chiefly busy dealing with the succession of internal crises triggered by his conservative opponents, and translating into practice his policy of detente in Iran?s external relations. Nevertheless, he never failed to provide his full backing to Nasrallah and Hizbullah.

As his term drew to a close, Khatami was looking forward to leaving the political fray and returning to the quiet atmosphere of his university library despite numerous appeals ? including from Khamenei himself ? to run for re-election. He seems to have been swayed by two key encounters.

One was a meeting with university students, who argued with him passionately that although the conservatives had managed to sabotage and slow down the reform process, it was nonetheless making incremental progress. But they warned Khatami that if he exited the political scene, the conservatives would bring it to a halt.

Shortly thereafter, Khatami held a meeting with Nasrallah, who was visiting Tehran at the head of a party delegation. He had earlier had an audience with Khamenei ? Hizbullah?s sup-reme spiritual leader as well as Iran?s ? at which he had described Khatami as a credit to both Iran and Shiism, expressing the hope that he would run for a second term. No one knows exactly what went on at the meeting between Nasrallah and Khatami, but shortly after it, and his talk with the students, the president decided to run for re-election after all.

The 22 million votes Khatami received confirm that the majority of Iranians shared the Hizbullah leader?s trust in him. This trust has been reciprocated as Khatami has used his personal prestige on the international stage to help shield Hizbullah from the threats and pressure it has faced since Sept. 11.

While Israel does its utmost to have Hizbullah branded the world?s premier ?terrorist? organization, Khatami reminds European leaders of the need to distinguish between the new Hizbullah under Nasrallah, and the old Hizbullah during its Lebanese civil war years ? when it was associated with the abduction of Western hostages and the 1983 bombing of US and French military barracks in Beirut. He stressed to them that the new Hizbullah is the natural heir to an honorable resistance movement that had successfully frustrated Israeli occupation forces in Lebanon and compelled them to leave.

Khatami reminds European leaders and officials that under Nasrallah, Hizbullah has never engaged in hostage-taking, terrorism or actions against Western interests. Its only remaining military objective is to eject Israeli forces from their last foothold in Lebanon, the Shebaa Farms, and once it achieves this goal it will disband its military wing, leaving the rest of the organization to integrate itself fully in all spheres of national life. And he stresses that the Hizbullah of the early 1980s, whose declared aim was to turn Lebanon into an Islamic Republic, is history.

From Khatami?s viewpoint, Hizbullah?s evolution reflects the natural progression of a genuine reform movement in the sphere of religion and politics, which should be encouraged to achieve its full potential.

July 19, 2002 05:53 AM