Cox & Forkum: Mohammad Khatami

Just Say No to Khatami

The disgraced former president of Iran, Hojjat-ol eslam Mohammad Khatami, wants to speak in Washington, D.C., next month, and the State Department has already indicated it will welcome his visit.

This is pure foolishness of the type Lenin described when he famously noted that the capitalists would sell the rope with which the Communists would hang them.

Although Khatami has not yet formally applied for a visa, his talk at the Washington National Cathedral next month was approved by the office of Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, according to the Washington Post.

This is the same Nicholas Burns who said last Friday that the United States would push for United Nations sanctions on Iran if Tehran does not accept a U.S.-backed package of incentives aimed at halting its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities.

Indeed, if Nicholas Burns approved Khatami’s visit to the United States, Condoleezza Rice and the President should ask why of the Foggy Bottom Bureaucrat. And then THEY can explain to the American public why a terrorist anti-American former President of Iran is accorded a forum for his hate and pro-Iranian propaganda in the United States.

Now, let’s find out a little more about Mohammed Khatami:

Just one year into his term, his intelligence service murdered in horribly brutal fashion Darioush and Parvaneh Forouhar, leaders of the Iran Nation’s Party, then the best-organized opposition in Iran. The following year, Khatami quashed the student rebellion that began at Tehran University among INP members and sympathizers including Marzeporgohar (Iranians for a Secular Republic) and quickly spread to 18 other cities across Iran.
That was just the beginning of a crackdown on domestic dissent that occurred on Khatami’s watch and on his orders.
Ever since Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in a putsch on the night of Feb. 11-12, 1979, the State Department has been seeking “reformers” and “moderates” in Tehran.
Volumes have been written about these efforts. Some of them were contained in classified cables, shredded when the U.S. embassy was taken over by pro-Khomeini “students” in November 1979, and pieced together later on from the shredder sacks by Persian-carpet weavers.

In the beginning, some “moderates” truly opposed Khomeini’s Islamofascist system. Most of them were executed, wound up in jail, or have spent the rest of lives under house arrest.

But Khatami was never one of them. In 1984, as minister of culture and Islamic propagation, he presided over the creation of Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy army of terrorists in Lebanon and elsewhere. He thought that was exactly what the Islamic Republic of Iran needed to do to expand its influence around the world.

What consider Khatemi a moderate?

NOT

As president, Khatami never opposed Iran’s development of nuclear weapons technology, or long-range ballistic missiles to deliver them. On the contrary, it was on Khatami’s watch that Iran accelerated its once-secret nuclear weapons development, and flouted its success to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Khatami’s top nuclear expert, Hossein Mussavian, explained the ruse in an August 12, 2005, interview with Iranian state television, just days after Ahmadinejad took over as president.
Ahmadinejad supporters were arguing that Khatami had made unacceptable concessions by negotiating with the European Union over Iran’s nuclear program. But those critics did “not know that at that stage – that is, in August 2003 – we needed another year to complete the Esfahan (UCF) project so it could be operational,” Musavian reminded his viewers. (The Uranium Conversion Facility in Esfahan is where Iran today has processed more than 120 tons of enrichment feedstock, enough to manufacture between 10 to 20 nuclear weapons.)

“[T] thanks to the negotiations with Europe we gained another year, in which we completed (the UCF) in Esfahan,” Mussavian said.

Khatami is being sent to Washington by the regime with a similar purpose: use happy talk to distract the United States from crafting serious international sanctions that would inflict real pain on this regime and possibly help spark a home-grown rebellion.

Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, has said that US foreign policy is fueling terrorism and warned a conference of Muslims in Chicago of the dangers of allowing “narrow minded viewpoints and practices” to dominate public policy and discourse.

Why did the American State Department grant this Visa?

These are the people negotiating with Iran and they do NOT understand the enemy? Or Iranian Propaganda?

The Quotes:

• Mr. Khatemi told CNN in January 1998, “The impression of the people of the Middle East and Muslims in general is that certain foreign policy decisions of the United States are in fact made in Tel Aviv, and not in Washington.” …

• Mr. Khatemi told CNN, “I regret to say that the improper American policy of unbridled support for the aggression of a racist, terrorist regime does not serve the United States interest, nor does it even serve those of the Jewish people.” …

• Mr. Khatemi has spoken of “the criminal Zionist regime.” …

• In April 2001, the official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Mr. Khatemi as saying, “As a parasite, Zionism is founded on the fallacious concepts of superiority and the transgression of human rights.”

Condoleezza Rice, Nicholas Burns and the President have a great deal of explaining to do.

Stay tuned……

Former Iranian President Mohammed Khatemi (NB Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in background)

Previous:

Iran Watch: Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami – United States Foreign Policy Triggers Terrorism and Violence in the World

Iran Watch: Former Iranian President Mohammed Khatemi To Meet With Former President Jimmy Carter

Iran Watch: Former Iranian President Mohammed Khatemi Granted USA VISA

Technorati Tags: Iran, MohammadKhatemi, Khatemi