Khatami: We are terrorists
ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images Former Iranian president and leading moderate Mohamad Khatami is taking some heat from the hardliners over some intriguing comments he made last week: What did the imam (Khomeini) mean by exporting the revolution?” he asked in the speech Friday to university students in the northern province of Gilan, according to the Kargozaran ...
ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images
Former Iranian president and leading moderate Mohamad Khatami is taking some heat from the hardliners over some intriguing comments he made last week:
What did the imam (Khomeini) mean by exporting the revolution?” he asked in the speech Friday to university students in the northern province of Gilan, according to the Kargozaran newspaper.
“Did he mean that we take up arms, that we blow up places in other nations and we create groups to carry out sabotage in other countries? The imam was vehemently against this and was confronting it,” he added.
As you might expect, Khatami is being branded as a traitor for these remarks, notwithstanding his (dubious) claims about Khomenei’s views:
It is obvious that Mr Khatami must answer for his anti-patriotic comments and explain why he has taken such a stance,” said [hardline Iranian newspaper] Kayhan, whose editor-in-chief is appointed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. […]
“Mr Khatami has to make it clear whether using fervent martyrdom-seeking young men to combat occupiers is an ugly and violent act or a fully human and admirable one?” demanded [one conservative] MP.
No word yet on whether the former president has been regularly sporting the flag of the Islamic Republic on his tunic.
Blake Hounshell is a former managing editor of Foreign Policy.
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