Millions of Iranians galvanized by President Bush’s branding of their nation as part of an “axis of evil” marched in a nationwide pep rally on Monday that harked back to the early days of the Islamic revolution, with the American flag burned for the first time in recent memory.
Amid the dirgelike chants of “Death to America!” marking the revolution’s 23rd anniversary, President Mohammad Khatami tried to display Iran’s milder face, emphasizing his government’s interest in detente.
Ever since Bush designated Iran as part of an international terrorist network open to American attack, conservatives in Iran have been greatly buoyed, trying to use a resurgence of disgust with America to quash reform at home, daily denouncing Washington and exhorting Iranians to follow suit. This has made it difficult for Khatami to preserve his reformist agenda of promoting democracy and rooting out corruption–an agenda he emphasized on Monday before he, too, criticized American foreign policy.
“Our policy is a policy of detente,” Khatami told the throng clogging all avenues to Freedom Square in Tehran. “We intend to have ties and peaceful relations with all nations in the world,” except Israel.
Although less strident than his old-guard foes, Khatami suggested that the United States was partly to blame for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “The American people,” he said, “should ask today how much of the awful and terrifying incidents of Sept. 11 were due to terrorist acts, and how much of it was due to the foreign policy adopted by American officials.”
The threat to Iran “originates from the fact that America, or at least some of its officials, see themselves as masters of the world,” Khatami said.
After each important line, the orderly crowd burst into another round of “Death to America!” and waved a variety of signs, including one in English quoting the late revolutionary patriarch, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, saying, “The U.S. cannot do a damn thing.”
In his State of the Union address on Jan. 29, Bush singled out Iran for trying to develop weapons of mass destruction and for its support for groups like Hezbollah that the United States labels terrorists. In addition, Washington has recently accused Iran of sending weapons to the Palestinians, of trying to undermine the effort to build a stable central government in Afghanistan and of helping Al Qaeda members to escape.
In suggesting that the United States review its own foreign policy rather than cast aspersions, Khatami specifically cited what he depicted as the plight of Palestinians denied human rights because of American support for Israel.
The threats expressed by Bush and other administration officials during the past two weeks surprised many in Iran.
