Business articles of the business press often took favorable views of neoliberal economic reforms in the Khatami era, but apparently they were not good enough for Clinton and other Democrats. To their left, views like Donna M. Hughes' published in Z Magazine were common:
<http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/khatami.htm>
Women in Iran – A look at President Khatami's first year in office
Donna M. Hughes
Z Magazine, October 1998, pp. 22-24
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
There is a widely held view that Khatami supports the rights of
women, but his statements and appointments don't validate
that view. Prior to his election Khatami said, "One of the West's
most serious mistakes was the emancipation of women, which
led to the disintegration of families. Staying at home does not
mean marginalization. Being a housewife does not prevent a
woman from having a role in the destiny of her people. We
should not think that social activity means working outside the
home. Housekeeping is among one of the most important jobs."
(5)
Under Khatami's leadership the Supreme Council of the Cultural
Revolution decided not to sign the United Nations Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
(CEDAW), the most important international agreement on the
rights of women. (6) An international study comparing workforce
conditions for women around the world ranked Iran 108th out of
110. (7) In urban areas women make-up only 9.5 percent of the
workforce, and in rural areas the percent is 8.8 percent. (8) Even
Khatami's advisor on women's affairs acknowledged that there is
discrimination in employment and promotion against women in
government offices: "Some officials are of the opinion that men
have more of a role in running the family, so they favor the men."(9)
And so on and so forth (all that criticism in the second year of his presidency!).
Many hard-line critics of the Islamic Republic, especially those who do not favor normalization of the US-Iran relation, still hold anachronistic protests against Khatami even now when he is out of power: take a look at this video of the protest against Khatami on the occasion of his visit to Harvard in 2006, organized by the "Iran Freedom Concert" (Web site: <http://www.iranfreedomconcert.com/>) which says it is in solidarity with Iran's student movement: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQFaf9n_YtM>; and read this: <http://daneshjoo.org/publishers/currentnews/article_7547.shtml> (from a group to which Kenneth Timmerman has spoken: <http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/3275>). The Worker-Communist Party of Iran and other ultra-leftists in the diaspora and their non-Iranian sympathizers have taken a similar view of Khatami: <http://maryamnamazie.blogspot.com/2006/10/join-protests-against-khatami.html>.
The main leftists who supported Khatami were the remnants of the Tudeh Party and the Fedayin Majority and those who thought like them (e.g., some intellectuals who write for MERIP), whose voices get drowned in the swamp of Iranian exile politics where the loudest loudspeakers belong to the Mojahedin, ultra-leftists, royalists, former dissidents turned collaborators with the empire, and so forth. (Supporters of the reformists, inside and outside Iran, tended to downplay the problem of their neoliberal economics, with the exception of a few like Hamid Dabashi and Valentine Moghadam, but that is another story.)
Both in Iran and the West, protests and criticisms frequently focus on the President rather than on the Leader. The truth of the matter is that the Leader and the Guardian Council are more culturally conservative than not only Khatami but also Ahmadinejad (on matters such as gender relations, personal freedom, and stance toward ordinary Americans) and less economically neoliberal than Khatami and more economically neoliberal than Ahmadinejad, and all the forces of not only national defense but also internal security officially answer to the Leader, but that is seldom made clear. Moreover, there appears to be no clear strategy to change the basic power structure of the Islamic Republic even among those who are aware of the problem of the dominance of unelected over elected offices. The Leader thus often stays out of sight and stays in power, keeping people guessing his true intentions and playing factions against one another.
Khamenei just declared that Iran will not yield and that it will outsmart the Western powers. I don't know if it will, but it sure looks like Khamenei has outsmarted all domestic political factions, not to mention liberals and leftists in the Iranian diaspora and in the West in general.
<http://www.mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=545686> Tehran: 21:14 , 2007/09/03
Iran will not bow to pressure in nuclear issue: Leader
TEHRAN, Sept. 3 (MNA) -- The Iranian nation resists and will continue to resist bullying and will not yield to pressure on the nuclear issue or any other issue, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said here on Monday.
"If a nation desires honor, strength, independence, identity, security, and wellbeing, it must have scientific capabilities," the Leader stated in a meeting with ten of the country's leading young scientific figures.
The scientific movement of the country's youth and their progress are very promising for greater development, and God willing, their blessed movement will lay the foundation for the realization of the lofty goals of the Iranian nation, Ayatollah Khamenei noted.
He called U.S. President George W. Bush's recent remarks despicable, belligerent, and arrogant, adding, "Iran will defeat these drunken and arrogant powers using its adept and wise ways."
Iran should aim to attain such a level of scientific progress as to become a reference point in matters of science, such that scientists will feel the need to learn the Persian language, the Leader stated. -- Yoshie