Exit the Smiling Seyyed by Eskandar Sadeghi (guardian.co.uk)

Exit the Smiling Seyyed

Mohammad Khatami has pulled out of Iran's presidential contest. Is Moussavi capable of filling his shoes?

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• • Eskandar Sadeghi
  • guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 17 March 2009 21.30 GMT
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The night before last was a difficult one for me. A close friend, Ariabarzan M, rang me up as usual and after the traditional exchange of pleasantries, our conversation turned to the Iranian presidential election due to take place this June.

We spoke about Ahmadinejad's "common touch", his incessant tour of the country and innumerable visits to towns and provinces forgotten by Tehran long ago. We debated his expeditious deployment of colloquialism and vernacular in cultivating a "populist" – some might say "demagogic" – aura around himself. We spoke about Mohammad-Baqir Qalibaf, the present mayor of Tehran, and strident critic of Ahmadinejad, and his decision not to run this year. After a brief mention of Mehdi Karrubi's candidacy and his National Trust Party, we finally turned to the former president and most amiable face of the Islamic Republic, Seyyed Mohammad Khatami. I launched into my routine encomium, extolling the many virtues of the former president when my friend interrupted me and, like a bolt from beyond, uttered the words: "Eskandar, didn't you know? Khatami's out of the race!" In that moment my jaw almost dropped to the floor.

Two weeks previously, in another lively debate with a good friend, Ehsan A, and in the face of numerous rumours which had been percolating the Iranian media that Khatami was on the verge of dropping out of the race, I remained confident. Having entered the race, I argued, there was no way Khatami could back out now. Websites and even fully-fledged campaigns, such as Mowj-e Sevvom, the Third Wave, had been orchestrated, pleading with the former president to enter the race to end the domination of the Iranian political scene by the so-called Principalists – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad chief among them.

Khatami, despite his many flaws and perceived failures over the course of his tenure as president, remained popular and nostalgia for the days of his presidency remain alive and well, particularly among Iran's youthful population, of which some 70%, as it is endlessly recalled by pundits and politicians, are under the age of 30. I was honestly shocked, even hurt, that Khatami could back out now, when a myriad of hopes and aspirations had been directly invested in his candidacy, only to be dashed in an instant.

I never bought into the idea, held by many, that Khatami was a mere foil for the sinister underbelly of the Islamic Republic, a friendly face to co-opt Iranians into their own oppression, and distract them from the state of abject toil they faced, day in and day out. I had voraciously read the books of Khatami and followed his every word, including his ground-breaking interview with Christiane Amanpour (1998). With Khatami, I vehemently repudiated Samuel Huntington's much-celebrated thesis elaborating the so-called "clash of civilisations" in favour of the former's alternative narrative, which stressed dialogue and mutual respect.

The fact that Khatami's interior minister, Abdollah Nuri, was jailed and his chief political adviser, Said Hajjarian, nearly assassinated (to mention but two of many examples) were not backlashes against an administration which merely echoed the figurative party line. Khatami was never going to be a Gorbachev-style figure, and western commentators who rebuked him for not conforming to their expectations often grossly misunderstood what was then taking place inside Iran.

Because of my own nostalgia for the Khatami era, I was blinded to the fact that the former president had firmly said from the outset that either he or former prime minister Mir-Hossein Moussavi would run on the "reformist ticket" to avoid splitting the vote to the detriment of reformist forces. Due to Moussavi's own apparent reluctance to run, Khatami felt compelled to announce his candidacy, but last week that all changed when Moussavi entered the race. With few other options available, it seems all Khatami supporters can do is trust in the "Smiling Seyyed" as he has come to be affectionately known.

Mir-Hossein Moussavi, at least in his previous life as a public politician was a man of the inadequately titled "Islamic Left", arguably the most radical wing of the Islamic Revolution, conflating the discourse of Third World Liberationism and Islamism. This faction, while initially prominent, later receded into the background and has, since the heady days of the revolution, greatly mellowed and rather paradoxically emerged as the source of virtually all of Iran's most ardent reformist politicians, intellectuals and political strategists.

Moussavi cuts an elusive figure that flies in the face of the stale dichotomy and standard picture of reformists versus hardliners that figure in western headlines: a "reformist" in favour of political liberalisation and civil society, while remaining steadfast in his commitment to the mostaz'afin or "oppressed" and "downtrodden" underclass of the Islamic Republic.

Moussavi was prime minister from 1981 until the post's abolition in 1989 and effectively managed the economy during the darkest days of the Iran's modern history, on a tiny fraction of the budget Ahmadinejad has enjoyed in recent years. And by many who remember the devastation wrought by the Iran-Iraq war, he is regarded as an incorruptible and resourceful politician.

The problem today, however, is that the legend of Moussavi may have eclipsed the reality. His protracted absence from the melee of Iranian politics, while bestowing upon him a certain mystique, raises the question of whether he will be able to capture the imagination of young Iranian voters. Moreover, Moussavi's views still remain fairly nebulous; voters have less than three months until the election to get to know him all over again. Whether this is actually feasible, with Ahmadinejad already hot on the campaign trail or whether he will be able to muster the charisma necessary to energise Iranian voters as Khatami did in 1997 is yet to be seen.