Join Us At Today's Iranian Alert Thread – The Most Underreported Story Of The Year!
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Posted on 08/30/2006 6:09:21 PM PDT by nuconvert
August 30, 2006 7:42 AM
Visa Not Denied
On Mohammad Khatami’s upcoming visit to the United States.
An NRO Symposium
On Tuesday, as Iran’s current president made clear he has no intention of complying with a U.N. resolution to halt its nuclear program, the U.S. issued a visa to his immediate predecessor, Mohammad Khatami. Should the visa have been issued? Was issuing it the exact wrong message for the U.S. to send Iran right now? Or is there some brilliant diplomacy somewhere at work here? National Review Online asked a group of experts to assess the situation.
-excerpt-
Gary Metz
The State Department that calls Hezbollah a terrorist organization granted on Tuesday a visa to the man who presided over the creation of Hezbollah, the former president of the Islamic Republic, Mohammad Khatami.
The smiling Khatami’s so-called “reformist” movement is dead. He promised he would “reform” the government while remaining committed to “the rule of the clerics.” He lost his popular support when his government murdered or jailed its dissidents and proved unable to make even modest reforms. Last year his movement died when Iranians refused to vote any longer for candidates pre-selected by the regime.
Now he is coming to the U.S. for a “dialogue with the West.” But the regime’s very purpose is to replace a world dominated by the U.S. with their version of Islamic justice. He can no more offer an end to Iran’s one sided war with the U.S. than U.S. officials can negotiate away our commitment to freedom, democracy, and the rule of law.
Fortunately, Khatami said Monday that he will not come if he is subjected to the normal fingerprinting of Iranians visiting America. Someone needs to make it clear that the man, who presided over the creation of a terrorist organization that until 9/11 killed more Americans than any other, will at least be fingerprinted. He should be arrested.
— Gary Metz is editor of Regime Change Iran.
-excerpt -
Pooya Dayanim
The issuance of a United States visa to Mohammad Khatami, the former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is an insult to the American people, a slap in the face of Iran’s pro-democracy movement, a mockery of the immigration and antiterrorism laws, and a continuation of the schizophrenic non-policy of the State Department. To see him here, in both New York and Washington, D.C., cities attacked five years ago, will be heartbreaking.
Mohammad Khatami was the president of Iran between the years of 1997 and 2004. The State Department listed Iran as the number-one state sponsor of terrorism during those years. Among other things, during the Khatami years, Iran refused to hand over to the United States the Iranian intelligence officials who supervised the attack on the Khobar towers that killed American soldiers. Khatami continues to support Hezbollah, Hamas, and has called for the destruction of the state of Israel.
During the Khatami era, freedom of press and assembly was relaxed by the Iranian intelligence and security apparatus to lull the reformists and true democrats into a false sense of security; thousands and thousands of students, journalists, women, clerics, and women started to express their opinions freely. For their foolish faith, many of them would pay. Khatami was president during the biggest crackdown on the Iranian media since the beginning of the Iranian revolution. Khatami was president when Jews were sent to prison on charges of espionage. Khatami was president when Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi was killed and Khatami was president when thousands of university students were arrested after the 1999 student rioting. I could go on.
While Khatami gets ready to feast at the banquets being thrown in his honor, Ahmad Batebi, the hero of the 1999 student movement, must prepare himself for another day of torture and beatings in solitary confinement.
In 1999, I met with an Iran desk officer in the State Department. On the door of his office was a cartoon. The cartoon depicted an executioner holding a bloody chainsaw while wearing a smiley face. The caption read: “Khatami’s Iran.” I asked why was it that the State Department did not do something about Iran. I was told that the Clinton administration was distracted by other issues but that one day the schizophrenic approach towards Iran would end.
We’re still waiting.
— Pooya Dayanim is the president of the Iranian Jewish Public Affairs Committee (IJPAC). He is the past director of foreign affairs of the Iran referendum movement.
excerpt -
Michael Ledeen
Giving Khatami prestigious platforms all over America is a dumb move, and it will enormously discourage the Iranian people. For those who believed Bush is serious about regime change, this is a numbing blow. Would FDR have given Goebbels a visa while the Reich was attacking Czechoslovakia?
Whatever the intent, this looks like blatant appeasement and the people in the Middle East will certainly “understand” it that way.
Khatami is very much a member of the clerical fascist regime. He was the empty vessel into which the Iranian people poured their dreams of freedom when they elected him; now he couldn’t win an election for dog catcher. He presided over brutal repression, including the grisly murders of the Forouhars in 1978 and the mass murders and arrests of student demonstrators a year later.
Alas, this confirms my worst fears about this administration. Talk, talk, talk, but when it is time to act, they are still talking. Or rearranging the deck chairs over at the Pentagon in the middle of a war.
— Michael Ledeen, an NRO contributing editor, is most recently the author of The War Against the Terror Masters. He is resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute.
-excerpt -
Rev. Keith Roderick
Mohammad Khatami was the president of Iran when that country was identified by President Bush as one of the three in the “Axis of Evil.” Have the secretary of State and the president been advised of a miraculous conversion by Khatami that has earned him a visa to travel and speak throughout the United States? There were only superficial changes during the years of the Smiling Mullah’s presidency; he was no less entrenched in the insidious fascist system of the Islamic Republic than the other ruling members of the religious establishment. Khatami ruled over the largest repression of the media and the student democratic movement in the Iranian Islamic Republic’s history.
The administration is preparing a back-up plan in the event that China and Russia do not accept sanctions on Iran in response to the repudiation of the U.N. Security Council deadline for Iran to end its nuclear program. That plan calls for the restriction of travel for the Iranian regime. One would imagine that an emissary, such as the former president Khatami, would be included in such a policy. If the right hand is planning to restrict travel, why is the left hand offering a visa and the opportunity for the Iranians to capitalize on the propaganda and to create confusion by promoting its former president? This is the same president, by the way, who is in lock-step with Iran’s present government in promoting its nuclear program. One can see where Iran has something to gain, but what is the benefit for the U.S.?
As an Episcopal/Anglican clergyman, I am appalled, but not surprised, by the National Cathedral’s invitation for Khatami to participate in a “dialogue” on the role of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims to achieve peace. The forum is destined to be only monologue. Dialogue takes two. Where are the voices of the others, the victims who suffered under the presidency of Mohammad Khatami? During his presidency, the Anglican Church and its leadership in Iran all but disappeared. What is the logic of celebrating the person, ideals, and regime that have been so responsible for the destruction of the Cathedral’s co-religionists in Iran?
— The Rev. Keith Roderick is Christian Solidarity International’s Washington Representative, secretary general for the Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights, and Episcopal Canon for Persecuted Christians.
-See link above for more-
WHOSE IDEA was this??? And WHO is advising the White House on this issue???
That's what I want to know.
Are we with the terrorists or against them!??!
Pong
Thanks. Read this earlier.
Must say I'm a bit disappointed with Taheri's response, though not sure what else he could say.
Why the H*** hasn't the entire State Department, or even the individuals "responsible" for this, been fired???
This IS Bush's fault!!!
"Must say I'm a bit disappointed with Taheri's response"
Yeah. Well, he also doesn't live here.
It's incredulous. I'm so angry, puzzled and disappointed.
The entire State Department should be fired, lock & stock and barrel; it's a nest of vipers. The fact that Bush didn't do this immediately was (to me) the first warning of this presidency.
This was Nicholas Burns who apparently made this decision. He has been talking tough on Iran.
I don't know what the h&ll he thinks this is going to accomplish except make millions of Iranians angry and disappointed in Pres. Bush. Besides making Americans angry.
Join Us At Today's Iranian Alert Thread – The Most Underreported Story Of The Year!
"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail DoctorZin”
BS. The visa would never be issued without WH approval. How do you think Jerry Adams got a visa over the objections of the State Department? These decisions on issuing visas to high profile applicants are made in the WH and no where else.
Yep.
There is a new game in town: The actual murderer is called "the military wing", the one who pays him, equips him and sends him is now called "the political wing" and the head of the operation is called the "spiritual leader". There are numerous other examples of such Orwellian nomenclature, used every day not only by terror chiefs but also by Western media. These words are much more dangerous than many people realize. They provide an emotional infrastructure for atrocities. It was Joseph Goebbels who said that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. He is now being outperformed by his successors.
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