Invited by Professor Joseph Camilleri, director of the Centre for Dialogue at La Trobe University, Iran’s former president Muhammad Khatami had an eight-day visit to Australia to give a series of speeches in different places in Sydney starting March 25.
As someone who has followed the news and events in Iran for the past decade, I consider this enormously vital for the world, including Australians, to get to know Khatami and even more importantly, his ideology and thoughts.
To get to know him better, study the following list of his responsibilities and positions:
1- Member of parliament (1970’s)
2- Head of Keyhan newspaper(government’s newspaper)
3- Iran’s Minister of culture (1980’s)
4- Head of Iran’s national library
5- Iran’s president (8 years) (1997-2005)
6- Head of Baran Institute (Rain institute), the institute to boost dialog among nations and civilizations
Khatami’s role in developing the idea of “dialog”, instead of threat and force in the Middle East and Iran was vital. The idea was so welcomed in the international arena and they named the year 2001 the year of “dialog among nations”.
Unfortunately that year was marked as one of the darkest years in history due to the attacks on the US by Al-Qaida. But Khatami never stepped aside and after the period of his presidency, he started to seek global partners to boost the idea of dialog.
Although some label him just as “another of them”, I believe voices like Khatami’s are the window of hope to have a peaceful Middle East and in a larger scale, a peaceful world. In his speeches, you may always hear criticism against Islam radicalism, imperialism and discrimination.
His period of presidency was one of the most free and stable since Iran’s revolution in 1979. However, he was strongly restrained by Iran’s internal radical organizations and he stumbled upon many obstacles inside Iran.
Therefore, he found the global scene a better place of activity and the European countries like Austria and Belgium founded similar organizations like Baran, to boost the idea of dialog.
Amin Hadjaran