{"id":1602,"date":"2006-09-07T14:13:44","date_gmt":"2006-09-07T18:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=1602"},"modified":"2006-09-07T14:13:44","modified_gmt":"2006-09-07T18:13:44","slug":"former-iranian-presidents-visit-provokes-some-misses-most","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=1602","title":{"rendered":"Former Iranian President’s Visit Provokes Some, Misses Most"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Eugene Bird and Carlton Cobb
\nSeptember 7, 2006<\/strong><\/p>\n

The former president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, is appearing at six major events during his visit to the United States this week. His visit has provoked widespread condemnation from a U.S. government-sponsored religious freedom group, by the governor of Massachusetts, and by sundry pro-Israel activists. Other than an interview<\/a> by Robin Wright in the Washington Post, Khatami has been reduced to holding his own press conference in Washington, DC, in order to be heard by the mainstream press.<\/p>\n

The press conference, scheduled for 4:30 PM (EDT) today, is expected to be covered by C-SPAN, but his high-profile appearance this evening at Washington’s National Cathedral is not. Former president Khatami (1997-2005) had an audience of 15,000 at the Islamic Society of North America conference in Chicago this past weekend, which was barely covered in the American press. The best coverage<\/a> was by Robert Fisk in the London Independent.
\n
\nKhatami attended a conference at the United Nations earlier this week and has appearances scheduled at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville today, a dinner hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations tomorrow night, and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Some Iran observers felt that the U.S. issued the necessary visa because it wanted to promote Khatami as an alternative and more democratic Iranian leader than the present one. This would seem to fit in with the vision and funding of the Iran Freedom Support Act, passed by Congress earlier this year, but the sponsor of that resolution, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida) condemned the issuance of a visa to President Khatami.<\/p>\n

Coupled to their protestations that it was not seriously connected to attempts to topple the present government of Iran, CNI believes that issuing Khatami a visa was a symbolic gesture by the Bush Administration for a new dialogue. Despite the fact that Khatami was beaten by the present president in the last election, the administration may see him as a “back channel” to the current Iranian government, and the moderate, progressive Khatami might become a valuable ally in the future. Testing this thesis, the reaction of Iranians to Khatami’s visit here might be as important as the reaction of the American public.<\/p>\n

Missing from the former president’s agenda, however, is any appearance on Capitol Hill, where enmity towards Iran, and Muslims in general, is strongest and where his calls for a “dialogue between civilizations” most need to be heard <\/p>\n

——————————————————————————–<\/p>\n

Council for the National Interest Foundation<\/strong>
\n1250 4th Street SW, Suite WG-1
\nWashington, District of Columbia 20024
\nhttp:\/\/www.cnionline.org\/<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/www.rescuemideastpolicy.com\/<\/a>
\nPhone: 202-863-2951
\nFax: 202-863-2952<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Eugene Bird and Carlton Cobb September 7, 2006 The former president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, is appearing at six major events during his visit to the United States this week. His visit has provoked widespread condemnation from a U.S. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-pQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}