The Ayatollah Begs To Differ Part 6

"And why were you arrested in the first place?" I asked, a.s.suming it was for some sort of political or antirevolutionary infraction.

"Some business issues," he said. "I was told, before I came back to Iran in '92, that I'd be okay, but obviously I wasn't." A friend leaned over to me and explained that he had been a rather wealthy and successful businessman during the Shah's era and that his businesses were taken over by the government when he fled during the revolution, apparently with quite a large sum of cash. "When I escaped prison the first time and went to the United States-"

"Wait a minute!" I interrupted him. "You escaped Evin and went back to the United States?"

"Yeah," he said. "I just left during one of my 'vacations'-"

"Wait," I interrupted again. "Why on earth did you return, then?"

"To f.u.c.k f.u.c.k these people's mothers!" he exclaimed. "Why else?" I looked around uncomfortably, his wife blushed, and he burst out laughing. "Eighty percent of all Iranians born after Khomeini came to power will have to be killed," he continued in a more serious tone, but one that reflected both a bitterness and a tacit admission that Iran, with most of its population born after the revolution, is unlikely to ever change in the way that he and his contemporaries may wish it to. these people's mothers!" he exclaimed. "Why else?" I looked around uncomfortably, his wife blushed, and he burst out laughing. "Eighty percent of all Iranians born after Khomeini came to power will have to be killed," he continued in a more serious tone, but one that reflected both a bitterness and a tacit admission that Iran, with most of its population born after the revolution, is unlikely to ever change in the way that he and his contemporaries may wish it to. "Eighty percent," "Eighty percent," he said loudly, as if to emphasize the impossibility of his political dreams, and he headed to the dining table, rather stoically, I thought, despite his advancing state of inebriation. he said loudly, as if to emphasize the impossibility of his political dreams, and he headed to the dining table, rather stoically, I thought, despite his advancing state of inebriation.

If there's any Thursday afternoon salon where the Iranian intelligence services must absolutely be present, even behind the garden walls, it would have to be at the home of Sadeq Kharrazi, nephew of the former foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi, a former amba.s.sador to Paris himself, and a key member of the nuclear negotiating team under President Khatami. Kharrazi's distaste for Ahmadinejad and his ilk is well-known; he is one of the most vocal of former government officials in openly criticizing the current administration to anyone who will listen. A charming, highly intelligent man with sophisticated tastes, he was a princ.i.p.al author of the infamous Iranian "proposal" to the White House in 2003, a proposal for steps Iran would be willing to take in order to normalize relations that was rejected by George Bush out of hand; and, if for no other reason than his efforts to reach out to the United States, the present government reserves for him a particular loathing.6 But Kharrazi is a child of the revolution too, from a clerical family (and his sister is married to the Supreme Leader's son), and unless he strays too far from the principles of the Islamic Republic in his views or actions, Ahmadinejad can do him no harm. But Kharrazi is a child of the revolution too, from a clerical family (and his sister is married to the Supreme Leader's son), and unless he strays too far from the principles of the Islamic Republic in his views or actions, Ahmadinejad can do him no harm.

Kharrazi's house is, naturally, in the far reaches of privileged North Tehran, on a quiet street of unseen mansions behind the tall walls that surround their gardens. The entrance, a nondescript and very ordinary white metal door, properly disguises, as Persian tastes dictate, what has to be one of the finest homes in the capital: a house that could easily grace the pages of any American or European shelter magazine; a fully and authentically remodeled old Persian house, filled with Persian art and antiques, old rescued tile work on the interior walls and arches that look onto large, manicured gardens hidden from prying eyes by their tall walls. Kharrazi's library, up a winding staircase that leads to the traditional second-floor formal quarters, and which he showed me on a short private tour, is possibly the largest antiquarian Persian library in private hands, with shelf after shelf lined with irreplaceable volumes of Iranian poetry, literature, and religious texts from before the printing press to more contemporary times. (Kharrazi donated some ten thousand contemporary Iranian books to the newly created Inst.i.tute for Iranian Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in late 2006.) The salon here, in 2007, is not about opium or indeed any other vice, for the guests are all from the revolutionary elite even if they're not in power at present, and they cannot boldly exhibit un-Islamic behavior in each other's presence. They do, however, relax with tea, coffee, and Cuban cigars, a favored status symbol of the more progressive among the establishment. Progressive, reformist, and even quite Westernized in some ways they may be, but there are no women (who must be hidden somewhere), for all the work of serving tea and sweetmeats, emptying ashtrays, and such is performed by two houseboys. It could be a Persian house of a century ago, except the houseboys are the most modern of the men, with long, gelled hair, fas.h.i.+onable jeans and T-s.h.i.+rts, and, unlike the guests, clean-shaven cheeks. Talk is almost always of politics and, with a number of Foreign Ministry types always present, of foreign relations, but the houseboys take no notice, only occasionally smiling if a ribald joke is inserted into the conversation by one of the guests. Despair at what everyone considers the sorry state of Iranian politics is evident in the conversation, and one guest, a former top official with extremely close ties to the Revolutionary Guards who has been written about in the West, even suggests that Iran would be better off without elections. "This is what happens when you let people vote," he says emphatically. "The idiots elect an idiot." He then turns to a colleague with banking connections and whispers, loud enough for me to hear a few feet away, "Do you think you can help with a $120 million transaction?" His colleague seems momentarily taken aback. "For the Guards, of course," he adds nonchalantly, taking a puff from a long Cohiba. (Recent UN and U.S. sanctions against Iranian banks had made dollar transactions in Tehran somewhat problematic.) is what happens when you let people vote," he says emphatically. "The idiots elect an idiot." He then turns to a colleague with banking connections and whispers, loud enough for me to hear a few feet away, "Do you think you can help with a $120 million transaction?" His colleague seems momentarily taken aback. "For the Guards, of course," he adds nonchalantly, taking a puff from a long Cohiba. (Recent UN and U.S. sanctions against Iranian banks had made dollar transactions in Tehran somewhat problematic.) If any of the fifteen or twenty men who drifted in and out of the house on a Thursday afternoon were indeed informants or intelligence agents, they'd have much to report, I thought, but nothing that could be particularly actionable. The judiciary and the intelligence services, independent of the executive branch, may indeed be the more conservative and hard-line bodies in the Islamic Republic, but they know better than to do anything more than listen in a gathering such as this. Populist presidents like Ahmadinejad, they know, will come and go, but the political elite (reform-minded or not but all with close ties to, if not relatives of, the clerics) and the Revolutionary Guards, of course, are the constants that the republic needs to survive.

In Iran today, the Iranian intelligence services are generally far more concerned with plots against the state, real or imagined, and political activism that spreads to the streets than with the conversations of Iranians behind closed doors, whether they be doors belonging to prominent citizens known to the state or more una.s.suming ones behind which anonymous middle-and working-cla.s.s Iranians grumble about the country's state of affairs. It is perhaps for that reason that some political activists have, consciously or unconsciously, taken their activism behind movable Persian walls, away from the prying eyes of the state.

One of the better-known groups who have done so are women campaigning for change in the discriminatory laws of the Islamic Republic (but who are careful to emphasize in their materials that what they are calling for is not against the laws of Islam) who come under the banner of "Change for Equality."7 A campaign to gather one million signatures to present to parliament began in mid-2006, after a women's demonstration was broken up by police and its leaders arrested (most received suspended sentences and were subsequently released), but the way the campaigners went about gathering the signatures and pursuing their activism made it almost impossible for the authorities to clamp down on their activities without breaching the figurative walls that Persians erect wherever they can. Women's hair salons, for example, became places to promote their campaign, as did subway cars, buses, factories, and even picnic grounds, places not normally patrolled by government agents looking for treasonous activity, and although many women sympathetic to the cause were unwilling to put their names to a doc.u.ment out of concern that they might endanger themselves, by the summer of 2007 over a hundred thousand signatures had been compiled, an impressive number if one considers the handful of women who were active in collecting them and the lengths to which they went, including knocking on the doors of private homes, to do so. A campaign to gather one million signatures to present to parliament began in mid-2006, after a women's demonstration was broken up by police and its leaders arrested (most received suspended sentences and were subsequently released), but the way the campaigners went about gathering the signatures and pursuing their activism made it almost impossible for the authorities to clamp down on their activities without breaching the figurative walls that Persians erect wherever they can. Women's hair salons, for example, became places to promote their campaign, as did subway cars, buses, factories, and even picnic grounds, places not normally patrolled by government agents looking for treasonous activity, and although many women sympathetic to the cause were unwilling to put their names to a doc.u.ment out of concern that they might endanger themselves, by the summer of 2007 over a hundred thousand signatures had been compiled, an impressive number if one considers the handful of women who were active in collecting them and the lengths to which they went, including knocking on the doors of private homes, to do so.8 A million signatures, or even a hundred thousand, the organizers must've reasoned, could be a far more effective call for change, change in Iran's laws that has the moral, if not vocal, support of many politicians and even clerics, than a public demonstration of a few hundred women that would immediately be broken up by the authorities and quickly forgotten, as such events always had been in the past. A million signatures, or even a hundred thousand, the organizers must've reasoned, could be a far more effective call for change, change in Iran's laws that has the moral, if not vocal, support of many politicians and even clerics, than a public demonstration of a few hundred women that would immediately be broken up by the authorities and quickly forgotten, as such events always had been in the past.

While political activists of all stripes continue to devise imaginative ways to further their causes and agendas, whether by retreating behind walls they believe the authorities can't or won't breach or by challenging the government publicly but with caution, they know they have to tread lightly as their names become known to the security services, who are at all times suspicious of any activity that might lead to a revolution, "velvet" or otherwise. Iranians who are of little or no interest to agents of the Islamic Republic are Iranians who, despite privilege, wealth, Western appearance, and generally secular ways, live their lives quietly behind the walls of their homes and have neither real political influence nor ambitions. As long as they can continue to make a living, maintain their wealth, travel freely, and party as they please in private, the members of this secular elite are generally unwilling to jeopardize their comfortable lifestyles for the sake of any form of political activism. They have political opinions, of course, and they express them openly among friends in the privacy of their homes, but they seem uninterested in any real activism-the kinds of efforts that would include attending or organizing protest rallies or marches-and they are no threat to the Islamic Republic.

On New Year's Eve 2005, I was invited to a party in North Tehran, one of many being held by desperately Westernized Persians, for whom their own calendar, firmly stuck in the fourteenth century, provided little excuse to show off their European ways. The ride to the wealthy part of town took me past grand emba.s.sies, smart shops with Christmas decorations, and a brightly lit Apachi burger joint on Shariati Avenue. The "Apachi" is, as one can denote from the logo, indeed meant to be an Apache, or at least a cartoon depiction of a tomahawk-wielding Native American, another indication that racial sensitivity has never been the Persians' strong suit. Crawling along the boulevard at rush-hour pace despite the late hour, I could see the inside of the burger joint teeming with youngsters of both genders, and they were hanging out, just as teenagers do in small-town and rural America, where the Dairy Queen and the bowling alley are the only places to meet girls or boys. And although the signs above the registers-big enough to be read from a pa.s.sing car-begged the customers to be respectful of and follow Islamic dress laws, the diners inside seemed more intent on testing the boundaries of exactly what those laws were. This night, at least, the Islamic Republic was allowing the walls of the fast-food restaurant, even its gla.s.s ones, to be a private barrier not to be breached.

I heard the music before I spotted the building. Ba.s.s, heavy ba.s.s, and all I could think was that the whole neighborhood knew there was a party going on. My cabdriver sensibly zeroed in on the source and let me out. "No, please, it really was very worthy," I said a few times, trying to hand over a few banknotes to his ta'arouf protestations. Inside the fancy apartment liquor flowed, the music was loud, the women were not only bareheaded but mostly bare, and I thought that there was nothing Islamic about this little part of the republic, with the glaring exception of the person who was serving drinks. She was a tall woman in head-to-toe chador with no hint of makeup, and stood in stark contrast to the heavily mascaraed, rouged, and lipsticked ladies, most with decolletages that would be considered provocative by Parisian standards, all around her. Her little daughter in the kitchen was helping out with the food: she couldn't be more than ten, but she was also wearing a full head covering, a hijab, tightly contoured under her chin. What, I wondered, did the mother-and-daughter domestic team make of all this? Wasn't the mother offended by the baccha.n.a.lia? Especially in front of her daughter? Wasn't she going to call the morals police?

The women danced to nauseating Los Angelesproduced Iranian pop, and every now and then one of them would s.h.i.+mmy up to me provocatively, b.r.e.a.s.t.s heaving, and encourage me to join in. "Can't dance Persian," I would say, but they were really insistent. "Really, no," I would insist, but ta'arouf extends to the dance floor and "no" really means "ask me again." Other men, all wearing ties as symbols of their disapproval of Islamic dress codes and hearty approval of all things Western, succ.u.mbed to their charms rather more readily and flailed about hopelessly while the women who enticed them from their chairs all but ignored them, happier to show off their own dancing and their seduction skills to anyone who cared to notice.

Eventually the chador-clad housekeeper elbowed her way through the gyrating bodies to place food on the dining table, but she kept her head down in either submissiveness or denial, I couldn't be sure which. My eyes followed her back to the kitchen and watched her pick up the phone. Perhaps she had had enough; perhaps she was was calling the vice squad. But no, nothing happened. She was behind the walls of her employer, after all, of her own free will, and she might explain it that way to her young and impressionable daughter. The men and women, oblivious to them, danced the night away as if they were in New York or London, and the housekeeper and her daughter were driven southward home, a home behind their own more calling the vice squad. But no, nothing happened. She was behind the walls of her employer, after all, of her own free will, and she might explain it that way to her young and impressionable daughter. The men and women, oblivious to them, danced the night away as if they were in New York or London, and the housekeeper and her daughter were driven southward home, a home behind their own more najeeb najeeb, or "virtuous," walls, by the husband she had called. A home where the Islamic Republic lived up to its name, and where it would have no reason to ever come knocking.

THE AYATOLLAH BEGS TO DIFFER.

Arriving in Tehran from Qom late at night on the last day of Mohammad Khatami's presidency, I switched on the car radio. A sweet-voiced female presenter read an ode to the president as my car pa.s.sed by a huge mural depicting an American flag on the side of a building facing an overpa.s.s-stars represented as skulls, and stripes as the trails of bombs falling. Her voice was sorrowful with a hint of trepidation. The next day Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be installed as the new president of Iran by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Tehran seemed to have suddenly become collectively nostalgic for a man it had all but abandoned, if not openly mocked, in the last years of his eight-year presidency.

All week I had witnessed a sort of melancholy mood; Iranians, even those who voted against the reformers, heirs to Khatami's politics, seemed now saddened to see him go. He had been the soft face of the nation for a long time, a period of growth and international outreach for the Islamic Republic, and despite frequent criticism from both left and right he had, many Iranians agreed on the eve of the archconservative Ahmadinejad's inauguration, performed his duties as honorably as any man could. Slowly, middle-and upper-middle-cla.s.s Iranians seemed to be coming to the realization that perhaps their lives, at least their social lives, could be in for a change, and not for the better. Khatami had challenged the system, if not changed it, in a way that no high-ranking official had, for although Iran had had its share of dissident mullahs, none had been permitted to advance their careers within the system as Khatami had. Strictly speaking not a dissident, for Khatami was a product of the revolution and was dedicated to its promise, he was nonetheless someone who differed with many of the leading senior Ayatollahs, and certainly with their conservative followers in government, on issues as far-reaching as the place of Islam in society and relations with the outside world, including the United States.

My friend Fuad once joked to me, after I had spent time with President Ahmadinejad in New York, that I should persuade the president to go to dinner at his house in Los Angeles, implying that he-and perhaps some other Iranian Jews-would politely give him a piece of his mind, certainly while employing some particularly challenging ta'arouf. I half-jokingly replied that although I thought that was an impossibility, perhaps I could persuade Khatami, who had told me he very much wanted to go to California the last time he toured the East Coast, to have dinner with him instead. "Listen," Fuad said in all seriousness, aware of my relations.h.i.+p with Khatami, "if you could arrange that, believe me, it would be a greater honor for me than if Ben-Gurion himself came to dinner! Please tell him that; I really mean it." Over a year and a half after leaving office, Khatami still had his fans.

That Khatami would still be relevant in Iranian politics today, particularly after a stunning loss in the presidential elections of 2005 by his would-be successors (Mehdi Karroubi and Mostafa Moin, the reform candidates in the first round, finished third and fourth, respectively), is not particularly surprising. Iranians have very little experience with political parties (the Shah having outlawed all except his own, Rastakhiz, to which members.h.i.+p was mandatory for not only all civil servants but practically the entire country), and few identify themselves with one or another of the parties that have existed legally under the Islamic governments that followed. Most Iranian voters wouldn't know to what party a particular candidate belongs anyway, and as such, personality plays a large role in elections, as does, naturally, where a candidate falls in the political spectrum: liberal, pragmatic center, or conservative. Khatami was the first true liberal (by the standards of Iran, or indeed the Middle East) to become president, and under his leaders.h.i.+p noticeable changes occurred in Iranian society. Not only were laws on public behavior relaxed (or ignored, mostly), but Iran's isolationist policies were almost completely reversed, leading to an opening for Iranian businesses and even tourism that changed the character of the Islamic Republic. Iranians abroad, after years of staying away from their homeland partly out of fear and partly because of the obstacles Iranian consulates would erect for dual-pa.s.sport holders, were actively encouraged to return to Iran, if only for yearly visits, and the normally dour and even rude officials in charge of issuing pa.s.sports to Iranians were transformed, by direct order from Tehran, into charmingly polite, ta'aroufing, and helpful fellow citizens.1 The kinds of changes to Iranian society that were made under Khatami have proven very difficult to undo, even when conservatives have tried their utmost. (It is important to note that during his populist campaign, Ahmadinejad convincingly dismissed, usually with a giggle, as ridiculous any notion that his administration would clamp down on press freedom, questionable hijab, or the Internet, all of which of course he then proceeded to attempt to do with varying degrees of success.) It is probably safe to say that a majority of Iranians, perhaps commensurate with the percentages that voted for him, share a political philosophy with Khatami-that is to say, a philosophy of moderation and real political change that doesn't subvert the Islamic underpinning of the state. (It should be noted that the Revolutionary Guards, thought of in the West as monolithically and ideologically hard-line, also voted for Khatami with about the same percentages, over 70 percent, as the general population.) Naturally the more left-leaning and liberal Iranians were greatly disappointed by the pace of change and by Khatami's unwillingness to take on the real hard-liners when it most counted, and there are those in the diaspora who are reluctant to countenance anyone who works within the Islamic system, but leaving aside economic factors (which Ahmadinejad played to his advantage), few Iranians, including members of the Guards, would describe themselves as being philosophically much to the left or the right of Khatami.

The desire for reform, both economic and political, is very much alive in Iran, no matter whom one talks to, and the broader reform movement seems to be awaiting a leader to emerge before the presidential elections of 2009. In every election since Ahmadinejad became president, the moderate and reform candidates have-much with the same majority that Khatami attracted-won decisive victories. A senior Iranian diplomat (and relative of an important cleric), in the days after Ahmadinejad's election, described to me what he believed to be Khatami's, and ultimately the reform movement's, biggest fault. "He didn't designate a successor," he told me, "and that doomed the reform candidates. If only he had groomed someone, if only he had properly endorsed one of the candidates, that person would have won easily, and we wouldn't be stuck with this idiot, this ablah ablah!"

A few days before he was to hand over power to his successor, I met with Khatami at Sa'adabad Palace, his part-time office in the less polluted and more secluded part of the city, and he seemed relieved to be leaving office, happy to be able to devote his time to what he truly believed in-working for dialogue among civilizations. Khatami, a mid-level cleric, a Hojjatoleslam (meaning "expert on Islam" or "proof of Islam") and not yet an Ayatollah, told me he was forming an NGO to pursue his dialogue initiative, and I got the sense that he thought he might actually be more effective outside government than in it, for he had, over the years, been thwarted by the clerical leaders.h.i.+p in trying to implement many political and societal changes he thought necessary to the healthy development of "Islamic democracy." He also had a fatalistic view of the future of politics in Iran, hinting at the probability of a painful future for democracy-minded Iranians under a strict rightwing regime not known for its tolerance of liberal or, in their minds, un-Islamic thought.

Khatami seemed saddened by the Bush administration's att.i.tude toward his country; he told me of his brief encounter with Bill Clinton at the pope's funeral that April, a mere nod of the head, and wistfully said that things would have been much different the last few years had America been under a Clinton presidency. He reminded me that Clinton had been the first U.S. president to sit through a speech by an Iranian official (his, at the UN) since the founding of the Islamic Republic (U.S. officials normally stand up and walk out as protest when an Iranian leader begins a speech at the UN), a sign to him that had there not been an American election in 2000, or had the Supreme Court decided its outcome differently, Iran and the United States might have found a way toward normalization of relations. Fundamentalists in both countries, he said, contributed to the animosity between the United States and Iran, and now, he implied, the situation could only get worse. I don't think he was quite aware of the irony that the "fundamentalists" he spoke of in America were closer in philosophy to Muslim fundamentalists, his political enemies, than to anyone else in the West. It strikes me often while I am in Iran that were Christian evangelicals to take a tour of Iran today, they might find it the model for an ideal society they seek in America. Replace Allah with G.o.d, Mohammad with Jesus, keep the same public and private notions of chast.i.ty, sin, salvation, and G.o.d's will, and a Christian Republic is born.

During the last few days of Khatami's presidency, there were a number of farewell events planned by his supporters and, on an official level, the state. On the Sunday night of the biggest event, dubbed "Salam Khatami!" "Salam Khatami!" ( (salam can mean both "goodbye" and "h.e.l.lo"), traffic around the Interior Ministry, where it was held, was snarled, and the main conference hall itself was packed. As I walked to my reserved seat, I pa.s.sed many dignitaries I could recognize and some I couldn't. The Chief Rabbi of Tehran was conspicuous in the front row, as were the Bishops of the Armenian Church and the a.s.syrian Church, and the Zoroastrian priests who were scattered about the first and second rows in prominent and television-dominating seats, no doubt reserved for them on explicit instructions by Khatami himself, who had made interfaith relations a priority of his presidency. Ayatollah Khomeini's grandson Hossein sat in the front row, center, next to Khatami's brother Reza, the ultraliberal politician disqualified from running for any office by the Guardian Council, who sat with his wife, Zahra Eshraghi, Ayatollah Khomeini's granddaughter. This was the liberal face of the Islamic Republic, even with Khomeini descendants in the crowd, and die-hard conservatives chose to stay away. The evening began, as all official functions in Iran do, with a piercingly loud recitation of the Koran. It sounded not unlike the call to prayer to my ears, but every time I thought the orator was finished, he'd leap into another verse. It was hauntingly beautiful, for Khatami's people had chosen a man with a mellifluous voice, though I still couldn't help but wonder as it went on and on with no end in sight whether the rabbi and the priests were thinking the same thing I was: that sometimes the can mean both "goodbye" and "h.e.l.lo"), traffic around the Interior Ministry, where it was held, was snarled, and the main conference hall itself was packed. As I walked to my reserved seat, I pa.s.sed many dignitaries I could recognize and some I couldn't. The Chief Rabbi of Tehran was conspicuous in the front row, as were the Bishops of the Armenian Church and the a.s.syrian Church, and the Zoroastrian priests who were scattered about the first and second rows in prominent and television-dominating seats, no doubt reserved for them on explicit instructions by Khatami himself, who had made interfaith relations a priority of his presidency. Ayatollah Khomeini's grandson Hossein sat in the front row, center, next to Khatami's brother Reza, the ultraliberal politician disqualified from running for any office by the Guardian Council, who sat with his wife, Zahra Eshraghi, Ayatollah Khomeini's granddaughter. This was the liberal face of the Islamic Republic, even with Khomeini descendants in the crowd, and die-hard conservatives chose to stay away. The evening began, as all official functions in Iran do, with a piercingly loud recitation of the Koran. It sounded not unlike the call to prayer to my ears, but every time I thought the orator was finished, he'd leap into another verse. It was hauntingly beautiful, for Khatami's people had chosen a man with a mellifluous voice, though I still couldn't help but wonder as it went on and on with no end in sight whether the rabbi and the priests were thinking the same thing I was: that sometimes the Islamic Islamic part of the Islamic Republic can be, shall we say, a little overbearing. part of the Islamic Republic can be, shall we say, a little overbearing.

When the recitation was finally over, speakers from all walks of life-artists, professors, doctors, and students-took to the stage and spoke proudly of Khatami's accomplishments and what he had meant to them and the nation. The highlights of the evening were two young students, one man and one woman, who, with a nationalistic fervor that would have been more appropriate at a fascist rally than at a gathering of liberals, poured poetic praise on the great nation, the great people, and the great leader they had had. The Khatami cheerleading section behind me broke out in chants, raised their banners, and enthusiastically jumped but not quite danced (for public dancing is prohibited in the Islamic Republic, especially for women), even as the applause died down. The speeches and the cheering momentarily threatened to turn the event into a dangerous celebration of a cult of personality, but I was confident that Khatami himself, who forbade government offices to display his photograph while he was in office (although many ignored his request), would ensure that it would not.

Khatami, elegant as ever in his summer cream-colored linen robes and perfectly wound black turban, rose from his front-row seat to renewed thunderous applause and an audience of millions watching on live TV. He hushed the crowd with gestures and launched into a speech that was self-congratulatory and yet somehow modest at the same time. How often, I wondered, had he wanted to give this speech, to tell an ungrateful nation that they didn't have it so bad, that without him they wouldn't have enjoyed even the modest freedoms they now took for granted? He spoke at length of two Islams-his true Islam and the Islam of extremism and fanaticism: the Islam of the Taliban. Both, he daringly said (for the strictly Sunni Taliban were Iran's archenemies and are reviled by almost all Iranians, including all the mullahs), exist in Iran, a veiled reference to the likes of Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, Ahmadinejad's archconservative patron, and to what might come under the new regime. A few people shouted, "Death to the reactionaries!" but Khatami quickly silenced them. "'Death to,'" he said in so many words, "is true Islam and the Islam of extremism and fanaticism: the Islam of the Taliban. Both, he daringly said (for the strictly Sunni Taliban were Iran's archenemies and are reviled by almost all Iranians, including all the mullahs), exist in Iran, a veiled reference to the likes of Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, Ahmadinejad's archconservative patron, and to what might come under the new regime. A few people shouted, "Death to the reactionaries!" but Khatami quickly silenced them. "'Death to,'" he said in so many words, "is so so over." over."

The president defended the progress made under his administration, listing his accomplishments one by one, but what was notable about his almost hour-long speech was that he referred to the Rahbar, or "Supreme Leader," only once. No public figure in Iran would ordinarily dare to exclude his ultimate boss, Ayatollah Khamenei, from a major speech, but Khatami was, now that he was leaving office, showing his contempt for the ruling cla.s.s that had made his job difficult during his presidency. The only other reference to Rahbar (which simply translates from Farsi as "Leader," but is also Khamenei's t.i.tle) during the evening was when the MC, in a flourish of Persian ta'arouf that combined flattery for one and insult for another, referred to Khatami as the "Rahbar" and, after an almost perceptible pause, "of the dialogue among civilizations." Wow, I thought, that that did not go unnoticed by the conservative supporters of Khamenei watching at home. At the end of his speech, and a moment that I found out later had been cut away from on television, a man shouted from the floor, "What about Ganji?," referring to the hunger-striking political prisoner Akbar Ganji languis.h.i.+ng in Evin prison at the time. Khatami smiled and called back, "Okay, okay," as if he intended to answer, but the MC, a tall, imposing woman in a cream-colored manteau (ankle-length lightweight coat) and hijab, intervened quickly and brought the rally to an end, allowing Khatami to be conveniently whisked away by his security contingent. Don't push it, she wisely must have thought, and as I looked behind me, I was relieved to see the man walk away unmolested by any government security agents undoubtedly mingling with the crowd. did not go unnoticed by the conservative supporters of Khamenei watching at home. At the end of his speech, and a moment that I found out later had been cut away from on television, a man shouted from the floor, "What about Ganji?," referring to the hunger-striking political prisoner Akbar Ganji languis.h.i.+ng in Evin prison at the time. Khatami smiled and called back, "Okay, okay," as if he intended to answer, but the MC, a tall, imposing woman in a cream-colored manteau (ankle-length lightweight coat) and hijab, intervened quickly and brought the rally to an end, allowing Khatami to be conveniently whisked away by his security contingent. Don't push it, she wisely must have thought, and as I looked behind me, I was relieved to see the man walk away unmolested by any government security agents undoubtedly mingling with the crowd.

Seyyed Mohammad Khatami was elected president of the Islamic Republic of Iran by a landslide in 1997. It had been eighteen years since the revolution of 1979 had wiped out over twenty-five hundred years of monarchy and the s.h.i.+a clerics of Iran had solidified their power in forming the only functioning theocracy of the late twentieth century. Iran had suffered a brutal eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s, a period when immigration to the West resulted in brain drain on a scale Iran had never seen, and those who remained committed to living in Iran (out of either necessity or unwillingness to start a new life elsewhere), from all cla.s.ses in society, were ready for a change. The austere, rigidly controlled society had already started opening up under Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the pragmatic and fiercely capitalist previous president, but Iranians were growing tired of the establishment that he and other clerics represented-a corrupt establishment given to cronyism-and voted overwhelmingly to give power to the relatively obscure former culture minister Khatami, someone they knew had at least allowed far greater freedom from censors.h.i.+p and a freer press and had expressed liberal views on Islamic democracy during his tenure as minister of culture and Islamic guidance-more so than any other public figure had dared to in the past.

Khatami had studied Western philosophy at university in Isfahan, but after receiving his bachelor's degree and while still studying for a master's at the University of Tehran, he moved to Qom to further his education in Islam. He completed his studies, ijtihad ijtihad, at the seminaries, achieving the status of mujtahed mujtahed, or "scholar," the equivalent of a divinity Ph.D., before moving to Hamburg, where he became chairman of the Islamic Center in the German city. He returned to Iran after the revolution of 1979 and immediately became involved with the government, first as a member of parliament, then as culture minister twice, once from 1982 to 1986 and then again from 1989 to 1992, when he resigned. He then went on to become the head of the National Library, reflecting his taste for all things academic, until his election as president in 1997. He was also (and still is) a member from its inception of the beautifully named but actually liberal-leaning a.s.sociation of Combatant Clerics, not to be confused with the hard-line Combatant Clergy a.s.sociation, both of which conjure up images of Monty Python's "Spanish Inquisition" skit from the 1970s, though only some of those in the latter group espouse philosophies bearing any similarity to the Bishops' of the Python troupe's fantasies. The "combatant" (or mobarez mobarez in Farsi, which can also be translated as "resistant") clerics of neither a.s.sociation, however, are ninja Ayatollahs who might, with robes flying, soar across a room to land a deadening blow on those they do combat with, but they are politically minded senior clerics who have chosen one side or another, reform or conservative, in the ongoing struggle for the soul of their beloved Islamic Republic. in Farsi, which can also be translated as "resistant") clerics of neither a.s.sociation, however, are ninja Ayatollahs who might, with robes flying, soar across a room to land a deadening blow on those they do combat with, but they are politically minded senior clerics who have chosen one side or another, reform or conservative, in the ongoing struggle for the soul of their beloved Islamic Republic.

There are some in either camp who agree on many issues, and Ha.s.san Rowhani, for example, the chief nuclear negotiator under Khatami and by no means a staunch conservative, is in the opposing camp to his, as is Rafsanjani the pragmatist, who leans to the reform side in Iranian politics, particularly if the conservatives are ascendant. Both clergies, extremely influential with the Supreme Leader, have, under a continued onslaught by Ahmadinejad and his allies, grown even closer to Khatami and the liberal reformers, perhaps hoping to derail any possibility of hard-line conservatives staying in power after the next presidential election in 2009 by uniting in their opposition to them.

Khatami was born in Ardakan, in the desert province of Yazd, in 1943, and so, unlike some other clerics, he has spent most of his adult life under an Islamic Republic. Ardakan is my father's hometown, and at the time of Khatami's youth was a backwater small village where everybody knew one another and a handful of families, probably no more than four or five, were wealthy landowners and the acknowledged elite. These families intermarried, naturally, and two of Khatami's mother's siblings, a brother and a sister from the Ziaie family, married my father's older sister and brother, thus making my many first cousins on that side of the family first cousins to Khatami as well. I had never met Khatami himself, however, until well into his presidency, but I had met his brother (and chief of staff during his second term) Ali Khatami in the late 1970s, when we were both in college in Was.h.i.+ngton, where he roomed with his cousin Mohammad Majd, also my cousin.

Iranian small-town values aren't diluted by years in the big city or even abroad, or by elevated status, and President Khatami welcomed me in Tehran in 2004 as a hamshahri hamshahri, a "fellow from the same hometown," and as though I were a long-lost relative. I saw Khatami twice on that trip at his offices at Sa'adabad Palace, a former palace of the Shah's used mostly for entertaining foreign dignitaries and a.s.signed to the presidential office under Khatami for essentially the same purposes. Khatami was most concerned at the time with finding a solution to the nuclear issue, and his government had suspended uranium enrichment research and processing while negotiating with the Europeans. But he was adamant that Iran had no plans to develop weapons and was incredulous that many Americans, especially members of the Bush administration, didn't believe him him, even if he recognized that they might have a harder time trusting some of the other members of Iran's ruling cla.s.s.

On my subsequent trip, in 2005, I met with him again at Sa'adabad, once while he was still president and once a few days after Ahmadinejad took office but while Khatami was still ensconced in his palace offices, which had been promised him by the Supreme Leader for his post-presidential career. (Ahmadinejad quickly convinced the Leader that that arrangement needed to end and evicted him within weeks of taking over, perhaps as payback for Khatami's barring him, when Ahmadinejad was mayor of Tehran and as was customary for the mayor, from attending his cabinet meetings.) Ali Khatami would normally arrange for a car to pick me up, but on my second visit, when Khatami had been out of office for a few days, there were no cars available from the presidential pool, so I jumped in a taxi and asked to be taken to Sa'adabad.

My driver was a chatty fellow, and we got into a conversation about war, mainly because, with Ahmadinejad taking over the presidency, le tout le tout Tehran was coming to believe that conflict with the United States was a distinct possibility. I asked the driver if he had served in the military, compulsory for Iranian males at eighteen or after college, and he replied in the affirmative. "I was wounded in battle," he said, "which is why my arm doesn't work properly." He lifted his right arm in the air, although it was impossible to detect any injury. Tehran was coming to believe that conflict with the United States was a distinct possibility. I asked the driver if he had served in the military, compulsory for Iranian males at eighteen or after college, and he replied in the affirmative. "I was wounded in battle," he said, "which is why my arm doesn't work properly." He lifted his right arm in the air, although it was impossible to detect any injury.

"The Iraq war?" I asked.

"Not exactly," he said. "It was at the tail end of the war, and it was the battle with the Mujahedin." I felt a chill, for he was referring to the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, the Iranian resistance group, the MEK, which had attacked Iran from its base in Iraq in July 1988 and had been ambushed by waiting Iranian troops, who decimated the small army, leaving some two thousand Mujahedin dead. My childhood friend and the son of one of my father's oldest friends, Payman Bazargan, who had joined the Mujahedin out of college in the United Kingdom, was one of those killed.

"Did you shoot any of the Mujahedin?" I asked, wondering if my driver could have fired the shot that killed my friend.

"Well, I fired my rifle, but I was wounded almost immediately and evacuated from the battlefield. Those poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, they didn't stand a chance. We knew they were coming, and we just mowed them down."

"And how did that feel?" I asked. "I mean, killing fellow Iranians?"

"Just as bad as killing anyone, I suppose," he replied. "It's all awful, this business of war, no matter who's fighting. I hope it never comes here again."

I was silent for a while, but didn't tell him that a friend had died in the battle he had described. I blamed Payman's death on the Mujahedin anyway, for as far as I was concerned he had been brainwashed by the cultlike organization, which had no business sending amateurs to fight against an army such as the Islamic Republic's. Payman had been a press officer for the Mujahedin; his British-accented perfect English had been useful to them until they had decided that in their biggest military campaign against Iran, pompously named Forouq-e Javidan-or "Eternal Light"-every able-bodied member of the organization would have to fight. Fight they did, and die they did. I had lost contact with Payman from the time he had joined the resistance group, but our families are very close, and his death had a large impact on our lives.

In Iran, former monafeghin monafeghin, or "hypocrites," as the MEK are called by the government, are usually given amnesty if they repent and pledge allegiance to the Islamic Republic-in fact, the Iranian media make a fuss over every former MEK member released from prison as a show of Iran's leniency-and I wondered as I sat in a cab heading to see a president of Iran whether Payman, if he had survived, would today have wanted to take advantage of the government's largesse. He would have recognized by now, I like to believe, that if there's one thing almost all Iranians inside Iran, and most outside, agree on, it is particular disdain for the most organized and militant of the exile opposition groups, the MEK. Although individual members have been in the forefront of a struggle against the Islamic government and have brought a good measure of deserved pressure on the regime, the fact that the group allied itself with the hated Saddam Hussein-an Arab tyrant who, unprovoked, rained Scud missiles on Tehran and whose soldiers ma.s.sacred untold hundreds of thousands of Iranians-and then actually fought on the Iraqi side during the long war, is an unforgivable crime in the minds of most. Even Iranians most strongly opposed to the Islamic Republic cannot abide the MEK and its leaders, Ma.s.soud and Maryam Rajavi, who were allies of Khomeini in the revolution that toppled the monarchy but broke with the regime, it is widely thought, not because of any discomfort over its interpretation of democracy, but because they were excluded from power by the clerics. Deep in thought, I looked out the window as my driver took me on a route I didn't recognize and came to a stop outside gates that were unfamiliar. "Sa'adabad," he said triumphantly.

"This isn't it," I said.

"Yes, it is," he replied indignantly. "The museum entrance is right there, past the gate."

"But I don't want the museum," I said, realizing that I'd have to tell him whom I was going to visit. "I need to go to the offices."

"Which offices?"

"Khatami's office."

The driver turned and looked at me. "President Khatami?"

"Former president," I said. "But his offices are still where they were."

"I think that's all the way at the other end," said the driver as he turned the car around. He looked at me suspiciously, wondering what business I could possibly have with the former president of Iran. When we finally pulled up to the correct gate, manned by soldiers and Revolutionary Guards holding machine guns, fingers on the triggers, he seemed nervous. "What should I say?" he asked me.

"Just stop right in front of the gate," I said, rolling down my window and smiling at the soldiers as we slowly came to a stop.

"Are you going to see Khatami himself?" the driver asked, seemingly unconvinced, after I paid him.

"I think so."

"Then tell him damesh-garm damesh-garm!" he exclaimed, grinning, a Persian expression difficult to translate into American English but oddly very close to the Australian "good on you."

Khatami was as usual gracious when he met me at the door to his office, despite my being late because of the detour with my driver, and seemed even more relaxed than ever. We talked in general terms about his presidency and his plans for the future. He asked me if I understood his speech at the "Salam Khatami!" "Salam Khatami!" function; he seemed proud of his "two Islams" reference, although he wouldn't go into more details or launch a more direct attack on the new leaders.h.i.+p in Iran. His goal now, he said, dismissing an invitation to critique the hard-liners taking over, was to further the understanding of Islam and Iran in the West, but also to further the understanding of the West in the Islamic world. He felt perfectly suited to the job. And, a year later, at the end of August 2006, in keeping with that job, he made his first trip to the United States as a private citizen and, more important, as the most senior Iranian official to visit the United States, outside of a trip to the UN, in the history of the Islamic Republic. He was serious, it appeared, about his new role and what he believed were his responsibilities. I traveled with him to Chicago, Was.h.i.+ngton, and Boston, and spent time with him in New York, and throughout the trip he was energized and frankly amazed at the goodwill he experienced at every stop, whether by Americans or Muslim Americans who hosted a number of functions for him. He was genuinely embarra.s.sed by the level of security provided him by the State Department, a level normally reserved for the highest-profile visiting heads of state and one that attracted much attention, and by the end of the trip had become friendly with the security detail a.s.signed to him, so much so that jokes and pleasantries, in halting English on his part, were often exchanged with his minders, who told me they had really enjoyed working with and learning from Khatami and his entourage. "Axis of evil," it seems, was the furthest thing from their minds. function; he seemed proud of his "two Islams" reference, although he wouldn't go into more details or launch a more direct attack on the new leaders.h.i.+p in Iran. His goal now, he said, dismissing an invitation to critique the hard-liners taking over, was to further the understanding of Islam and Iran in the West, but also to further the understanding of the West in the Islamic world. He felt perfectly suited to the job. And, a year later, at the end of August 2006, in keeping with that job, he made his first trip to the United States as a private citizen and, more important, as the most senior Iranian official to visit the United States, outside of a trip to the UN, in the history of the Islamic Republic. He was serious, it appeared, about his new role and what he believed were his responsibilities. I traveled with him to Chicago, Was.h.i.+ngton, and Boston, and spent time with him in New York, and throughout the trip he was energized and frankly amazed at the goodwill he experienced at every stop, whether by Americans or Muslim Americans who hosted a number of functions for him. He was genuinely embarra.s.sed by the level of security provided him by the State Department, a level normally reserved for the highest-profile visiting heads of state and one that attracted much attention, and by the end of the trip had become friendly with the security detail a.s.signed to him, so much so that jokes and pleasantries, in halting English on his part, were often exchanged with his minders, who told me they had really enjoyed working with and learning from Khatami and his entourage. "Axis of evil," it seems, was the furthest thing from their minds.

President Khatami had arrived in New York on August 31, at almost the exact hour that Amba.s.sador John Bolton declared the deadline would pa.s.s for Iran to comply with the UN resolution on enrichment. As ludicrous as it sounds, there had been some question as to whether it would expire at midnight New York time or Tehran time; in the end, it seems, Tehran time, seven and a half hours ahead of New York, won. And Amba.s.sador Bolton's own State Department met Khatami's Austrian Airlines jet at Kennedy, on the tarmac, with a full contingent of security provided by the department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security (along with the New York Police Department and the New York State Highway Patrol). The president was whisked to the residence of the Iranian amba.s.sador to the UN on Fifth Avenue, and he settled in for a quiet day of rest before his tour of America began in earnest. The Bush administration had already forbidden contact between current government officials and Khatami (not counting the security contingent), and for domestic Iranian political reasons he couldn't have met with anyone from the Bush administration anyway, but there were apparently many former government officials who were keen to see him, along with countless other influential Americans, such as George Soros and Richard Blum (Dianne Feinstein's husband), who flew into Boston on his private jet to have a private meeting with Khatami in his hotel suite. Blum, who is close to Jimmy Carter, again offered Khatami (I was interpreting for them) to help set up a meeting between the two, suggesting his jet could be available should it be necessary for logistical reasons. Khatami declined graciously, and I pointed out that not only was his schedule full but his special visa allowed him to visit only the cities that had been preapproved by the State Department. Atlanta was not on the list.

At the end of President Khatami's private U.S. trip, the question of whether it was sanctioned or not or even ordered by the leaders.h.i.+p in Tehran, as some American political figures claimed, seemed to fade away, at least to those of us who were along for the ride. The symbolism itself of an Iranian president in America was important, yes, but outside of the media reports and what could be gleaned from the interviews and the questions Khatami answered publicly, there were moments that gave real hope to those who were looking for signs, any signs, that a conflict with Iran could be avoided, even with a far more obstinate government in power in Tehran. Khatami's U.S. visit began on a day when Iran defied the UN and the world by refusing to abide by a resolution, and ended on the fifth anniversary of September 11, a tragedy that, he often pointed out on his trip, he was one of the first world leaders to condemn. Many of the Americans he met, evidently impressed by him, expressed the wish that he was still the president of Iran rather than the incorrigible Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but the same is probably said often enough to Al Gore about the Bush administration and almost certainly privately said to Bill Clinton as well. Khatami, who still has the ear of the Supreme Leader and will remain influential in Iranian politics for years to come, was himself influenced by traveling around the eastern United States, always on commercial flights (including a Jet Blue one-cla.s.s-service flight from Boston to New York, where the security agents accompanying us managed to get seats in the middle of the aircraft, much to the surprise and trepidation of some of the pa.s.sengers who, when they saw the bearded and turbaned Khatami and the half-dozen bearded men with him-to say nothing of the SWAT team, machine guns at the ready, surrounding the jet on the tarmac-asked to be let off the plane).

He was already a man who admired the United States for some reasons, all the while discounting its "liberal" democracy as a model for his own country, but on more than a few occasions he told Americans an anecdote that gave a clue as to what he most admired about that democracy. "Erdogan," he would say (referring to the Islamist prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at the time), "was once asked by angry Islamic nationalists why he sent his daughter to the United States to attend college. And he replied, 'Because in America she can wear her hijab at university.'" (In Turkey, a strictly secular, albeit Muslim, state, the headscarf, or hijab, was banned in academic inst.i.tutions until 2008 and is still banned in government.)

Mohammad Khatami was neither the first nor the only cleric to differ with the ruling establishment of the Islamic Republic on matters of democracy, affairs of state, or even interpretation of Islam. s.h.i.+a Islam allows for a wide range of opinion on virtually every issue, religious or political, which is partly why Iran feels it needs a Supreme Leader, an Ayatollah ostensibly senior to others, to guide the nation and its policies. Khomeini was certainly senior enough, and by virtue of his leaders.h.i.+p of the revolution he would have had the t.i.tle anyway, but Ali Khamenei is, despite his designation as a Grand Ayatollah, not universally recognized by s.h.i.+as as the most senior of the clerics. Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, once Khomeini's designated successor, subsequently disgraced for criticizing him and the government, placed under house arrest in Qom for his dissent, and finally freed during Khatami's presidency, qualifies as perhaps the first Ayatollah to differ with the ruling establishment on political and religious matters, and was far senior to Khamenei at the time of his ascendancy to the position of all-powerful leader of Iran. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most senior cleric in Iraq, who is actually Iranian, is also considered senior to most other Ayatollahs, although, because he differs with his Iranian peers on the matter of velayat-e-faqih, "rule of the jurisprudent," he would be automatically disqualified from any governmental role even if he tried to use his Iranian pa.s.sport to gain entry to the corridors of power (he doesn't hold Iraqi citizens.h.i.+p). While most Iranian Ayatollahs, certainly those deemed "Grand," and even most Hojjatoleslams, the next rung down in the s.h.i.+a hierarchy, agree with the concept of "rule of the jurisprudent," they often differ as to the interpretation of "rule." Some, like Khatami, believe strongly in the operative word "guide" and feel, for good reason in Khatami's case, that the role of the Supreme Leader should be limited to one of a guide in matters mostly confined to the religious, leaving the president of the republic, democratically elected, to administer the country with little interference from above.

Reformists, keen to bring Iran into the twenty-first century in terms of social progress, all agree, but it is important to note that without the power the Supreme Leader wields, a government such as Ahmadinejad's, also democratically elected, would undoubtedly harm Iran's political and social development to a far greater degree than it has. The Supreme Leader, a sort of one-man Congress and Supreme Court rolled into each other, provides something of a bulwark against extremism from any side, and although a different Supreme Leader might swing more to the left or to the right, it is unlikely that a Leader elevated to the position by the a.s.sembly of Experts-a sort of College of Cardinals that is popularly elected and reflects the diversity of Iranian political opinion-would not understand that his and his government's stability and survival depend very much on his performing the balancing act with finesse. (The first and only chairman of the a.s.sembly of Experts, Ayatollah Meshkini, died in the summer of 2007, and while one or two extremist members made a bid for his position, they were easily defeated when the body elected the pragmatic and far-from-extreme Rafsanjani as its chairman.) Iran's second Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, listens to his const.i.tuents, the Iranian people, he listens to all sides of the political spectrum, he considers public and world opinion, and then he makes decisions that annoy one or more parties but keep the Islamic Republic somewhat on an even keel. Democracy it is not, at least not by Western standards, but, as has often been stated to me by supporters of the system inside Iran, supporters who dislike being lectured to by Americans or even Iranian-Americans on the niceties of democracy, neither was the Supreme Court's decision in 2000 to award the presidency to George Bush "in the interests of the country" despite his second-place showing in the popular vote and a very questionable victory in the electoral college. But reformers are convinced, as they might be in any democracy, that in a truly free system the people would choose them, the liberals intent on empowering the people, rather than conservatives who would limit their freedoms. They believe that Iran would not have produced a president such as Ahmadinejad had they not been unfairly blamed for the limitations of the political system, a system that meant they had to compromise with and even yield to the Supreme Leader and the more conservative politicians at every turn.

One of the leading and most senior Ayatollahs closely allied with Khatami and known for his liberal views is Mohammad Mousavi Bojnourdi, head of the Imam Khomeini Center for Islamic Studies. He was present at almost every public event that Khatami attended, even traveling with him on his trips abroad (I met him for the first time at a UNESCO conference in Paris in 2005), and provided Khatami with some serious Islamic cover, for although Khatami himself was a cleric, he was, and is, far more vulnerable to attack by hard-liners than an established Ayatollah ever would or could be.

In addition to calls from extremists on the right for Khatami to be censured or even defrocked for traveling to the United States in 2006, there were renewed attacks on his Islamic piety when news surfaced in Iran in the late spring of 2007, via video on YouTube, that Khatami had shaken the hands of women on a visit to Rome, where he had met Pope Benedict, a few weeks earlier. YouTube is blocked in Iran, as are many other foreign Web sites, and it is often impossible to fathom the reasons behind the censors.h.i.+p (the Web sites of the New York Post New York Post, the Baltimore Sun Baltimore Sun, and the International Herald Tribune International Herald Tribune are blocked, for example, but those of the are blocked, for example, but those of the New York Times- New York Times-which owns the International Herald Tribune-Haaretz International Herald Tribune-Haaretz, and even the conservative and rabidly antiIslamic Republic Jerusalem Post Jerusalem Post aren't), particularly since it is common knowledge in Tehran that proxies are used to gain access to blocked sites. Naturally the government censors block the proxies as well as soon as they become aware of them (using U.S. software, much like the Chinese censors), but new proxies pop up on a daily basis, and Internet-surfing Iranians will often call each other in the mornings, as I have often done, to pa.s.s around the latest proxy addresses that enable them to freely navigate the Web. As such, and without too much trouble, the YouTube Khatami video and downloaded versions of it made the rounds of Iranian computers with lightning speed. Although the clip clearly showed him shaking hands with female admirers, he was forced to first issue a denial, and then say that in the crowds he encountered, it was far too difficult to see whether an outstretched hand belonged to a man or a woman. aren't), particularly since it is common knowledge in Tehran that proxies are used to gain access to blocked sites. Naturally the government censors block the proxies as well as soon as they become aware of them (using U.S. software, much like the Chinese censors), but new proxies pop up on a daily basis, and Internet-surfing Iranians will often call each other in the mornings, as I have often done, to pa.s.s around the latest proxy addres