Khatami Arrives As U.S. Weighs Sanctions on Iran

Former hostages are outspoken about Khatami's visit. "Can an ex-U.S. president do the same in Iran?" asked John W. Limbert Jr., former embassy political officer. Kevin J. Hermening, an embassy Marine guard and the youngest hostage, said U.S. officials have "completely lost their minds" in dealing with Iran. "Every time we agree to 'talks' it is seen as another indication of weakness and capitulation," he said.

Giving Khatami a visa was a "despicable" decision by the State Department, said former embassy press attaché Barry M. Rosen. "His dialogue of civilizations is nothing more than a public relations stunt by the oppressive regime."

L. Bruce Laingen, who was the ranking U.S. hostage, said he will attend the speech because he believes in talks, despite serious problems with the regime and doubts that Khatami has any power since Ahmadinejad replaced him.

In a 1998 interview with CNN, Khatami said he regretted that American feelings were "hurt" by the embassy seizure -- adding that U.S. policies had also seriously hurt Iranians. "In the heat of the revolutionary fervor, things happen which cannot be fully contained or judged according to usual norms," he said.

Like other hostages, Laingen said those words were not enough. "The question I would put to him would be: What do you think your government owes the hostages -- and I don't mean money, but something more than what he said to CNN."

Foreign policy experts largely approve of the Khatami visit. Geoffrey Kemp, a Reagan administration national security official now at the Nixon Center, called the decision "quite smart" and added: "We have nothing to lose by listening to Mr. Khatami . . . since he is highly influential behind the scenes."

Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Washington had missed a "huge opportunity" to engage with an "imminently engageable leader" when Khatami was president, all the more striking just a year later under Ahmadinejad's rule.

Senior Clinton State Department official Wendy Sherman said the United States might not be in confrontation with Iran if Khatami's visit had happened six years ago.

But Danielle Pletka, a vice president at the American Enterprise Institute, called the Khatami visit "surreal" and disputed descriptions of him as a "pragmatic mullah."

"If someone at the State Department can prove that the nuclear program didn't improve under Khatami, that terrorists weren't sponsored under Khatami and that arms were not shipped to Hezbollah under Khatami, then by all means let's label him a pragmatist and embrace him," she said.

Congressional leaders also criticized the trip. In a letter to Rice, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) appealed for the visa to be denied because the State Department had ranked Iran the No. 1 sponsor of terrorism every year Khatami was president.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom wrote the Washington National Cathedral to complain about the "troubling irony" of inviting Khatami to speak on interfaith cooperation when he presided over a government that imprisoned, harassed, tortured and even executed religious minorities.

Commission Chairman Felice Gaer called on the cathedral to appeal to the former Iranian leader to "denounce and express regret" for past violations of religious freedom.