The mullah’s regime disposes of two basic tactics it applies to any field: opacity and mystery. That system is conceived so that nobody can know who decides and the regime, when it is referring to one of its institutions, can break a government decision and also it can call a commitment into question in a way that is blurred and temporary.

Such system that is confusing for foreigners and able to divide all coalitions among the several partners of the regime (it’s the case of the Six) needs to be able to work some mysterious players, unknown persons, new faces we ignore the intentions. This is why the regime, since its beginning and although the president doesn’t dispose of all powers, always replaces a president we got used to by a new interlocutor having a new speech. Each one is allowed to 8 years of presidency and gives its place to another unknown. The role of this unknown is to call the previous commitments and concessions into question in order to help the regime to support a rigid cape regarding the main subjects: the charia, Lebanon and the Hezbollah, nuclear technology…

This is the regime’s way of functioning. It also allows of emphasizing the existence of political trends that are supposedly discordant and more or less respectable even if actually it is not a democratic alternation but a game to blur cards. It is question to disturb foreign interlocutors so they don’t know whom to talk to and hope endlessly the return of a moderator who finally won’t come back and whose role was to “moderate the debate with the West”.

Khatami, who was the first moderator par excellence during his presidency, remains having this role all the more that it is indispensable for the regime cause it chose to clash with Washington regarding the nuclear file.

Such role of moderator on the international field, Khatami endorsed it quickly right after Ahmadinejad’s election. This conference about religion isn’t his first mission of moderation: again and again the regime took such rabbit out of his its hat the past four years. He’s been sent to Davos in order to plead in favor of a negotiation free from previous condition, then to London… He’s been sent to Rome to represent the regime at the pope’s funeral with the mission to shake the hand of Moshe Katsav in order to moderate the anti-Semite image of the regime… And especially he’s been sent to Washington where he tried to negotiate an agreement with Americans, mission that was aborted further to Moscow’s great anger.

Unfortunately, the problem is due to the fact that the economic partners of the regime (wishing the end of the sanctions) need mostly a moderate and not only a moderator. And they do anything to get this moderate. The composition of the group that went to Iran testifies of such forcing will.

There were representatives of Italy, Iran first oil and gas partner, of France, Iran second oil and gas partner and of Norway, third Iran oil and gas partner! There were also two personalities from the human rights world (Kofi Annan and Mary Robinson) who, with other speakers, condemned fundamentalism and praise to religion in order to show that they could together pretend that the mullahs’ regime is not a fundamentalist regime but a respectable partner to promote tolerance.

By their presence, those leaders and representatives gave to the mullahs a sample of their media abilities and thus asserted their commitment to play the negotiation game with Teheran in pretext of helping moderates.

We can already determine that such attempt to ignore the nuance between moderate and moderator is a failure. Right after being confirmed in his role of interlocutor by his European peers, the moderator Khatami unwounded the regime’s official speech: the right to enrichment was a national consensus point and Iran would accept only negotiations with no suspension condition.

This is the single one answer of the mullahs’ regime to the European delegations but when it’s question to talk with American, the moderator can move and even negotiate.

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The french version of this article :
 Iran : Khatami n’est pas un modéré, mais un modérateur !
 (14 OCTOBRE 2008)