KHATAMI, MOHAMMAD

born Sept. 29, 1943, Ardakan, Iran Iranian political leader who was elected president on May 23, 1997. Khatami was the son of a well-known religious teacher. He studied theology at schools in Qom, where he later taught, and Esfahan, and he received a degree in philosophy from the University of Tehran. During the 1960s and '70s he gained a reputation as an opponent of the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. In 1978 Khatami was appointed head of the Islamic Center in Hamburg, Germany, and in 1979 he was elected to the Iranian national assembly. For a decade, beginning in 1982, he was Iran's minister of culture and Islamic guidance, but he was forced to resign in 1992 on charges that he was too permissive. He then became the director of the National Library and served as an adviser to the government. Khatami held the title Hojatolislam, signifying his position as a cleric, and as a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, he wore a black turban. In the 1997 elections Khatami was one of four persons approved by the Council of Guardians to run for the presidency, and on social issues he was the most moderate. With strong support from the young and from women and intellectuals, he took almost 70 percent of the vote. Some of his moderate cabinet appointments were controversial, but they were approved by the conservative national assembly. Nonetheless, tension between the president and hard-liners continued. In 1998 the mayor of Tehran, who had served as Khatami's campaign manager, was found guilty of corruption, sentenced to prison, and banned from office, and the minister of the interior was impeached by the assembly. Moderates in the media and reformists were also targeted. Although Khatami advocated dialogue with the United States, opposition to his policy prevented dramatic improvements in relations between the two countries.