Iranian leader in Washington

When LittleGreenFootballs posts a postive post aboutCAIR and an Iranian leader, it should get publicity.
Excerpt:
Here’s his take on Khatami (briefly).

He’s not a politican, he’s a theoretician/philosopher. He picked up a lot of this thinking from the rationalist German philosophers (he named a few - I’ve never heard of them and I was a philosophy major). The major reform he wanted for Iran was to move it away from oppressive theocracy to what the West would describe as pluralism. He NEVER EXPECTED to win the election. He campaigned simply to get the national discussion moving about his ideas. But win he did. The cabinet he put in place was comprised of absolutely brilliant people. But they too were of the ‘academic/theory’ bent, ‘elitists vs. populists’.

So why did his reformist agenda fail? My dinner companion was blunt. “Theocratic thugs”. There was an assasination attempt on a cabinet member that left him w/permanent brain damage and it went downhill from there. Many in his gov’t wanted to strike the mullahs and strike hard but Khatami was afraid it would tear the country apart “he didn’t trust the strength of the social fabric”.

Also, I asked everyone what they thought Khatami wanted to accomplish during his visit. Unanimously, they all thought he wanted to show Americans that dialogue w/Iran was a real possibilty.