Khatami Joins Resignation Threat

Kind of, in that wonderfully oblique way of his.

"I believe we should all remain steadfast on the scene and if one day we were asked to leave the scene we will do so together," the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.

Who he's up against just sound creepy:

Conservative MPs issued a statement describing the process of vetting candidates as a "legal, normal, and wise issue... Disqualifying those who do not qualify to serve as the nation's representatives is not a violation of people's rights, it safeguards their rights," they said.

I think this is partly due to clerics feeling he caved too much on the nuclear inspections issue, and other issues related to contacts with the west. It's more than just reaction to social liberalization.

Remember that the intelligence services, the judicial system, and the armed forces are under the control of the conservative clerics and their Sharia apparatchiks. The reformers hold a majority in Parliament (less of one than 4 years ago when they achieved it) but largely retain only weak control of the civil service and its funding mechanisms. This is an extreme example of a culture war between secular and fundamentalist ideologies; imagine if Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson directed the Federal and State Judiciaries, commanded the National Guard, and had the CIA, FBI and DHS reporting to them.

This is what our friends in Iran are up against. I'm impressed by Khatami's stand, but this has real potential to get ugly.