Synthesizing Democracy With Islamic Iran

Re “The Other Mideast Struggle,� editorial, Aug. 7:

President Mohammad Khatami is no Nelson Mandela or, for that matter, Nikita Khrushchev (to whom you compare him). He is a thoughtful, highly educated philosopher (not politician) who understands two basic facts of life about his country: its Iranian-Islamic culture and the deep religious beliefs of the vast majority of its people, and the need for a democratic system of government that values and respects this culture.

For four years he has been leading a wide-ranging coalition that includes the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people in a quest for establishing such a system of government. Khrushchev was a communist apparatchik who had advanced through the hierarchy of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party and therefore was eager to save the Soviet system. Khatami was not part of the system when he was first elected president. In fact, years earlier, he had been pushed out of that system.

Unlike Khrushchev, Khatami is not trying to save the system; rather, he is inventing a new one based on a synthesis of democracy and the Iranian culture. The success of his efforts will be a great victory for Iran and the Iranian people, and for the Islamic world and the Third World, and will indeed contribute greatly to peace and stability in that part of the world.

Muhammad Sahimi

Los Angeles