All eyes are on Iran, and one man has emerged pivotal to the country's future direction: Mohammad Khatami. Not only his politics but his entire persona stand in stark contrast to his political rival Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose four-year presidency has proved so fatefully controversial for Iran.When Mohammed Khatami stormed to his 1997 election victory in a landslide result, the world waited anxiously for the reforms and radical changes that he would bring to the Iranian Presidency. By the end of his term in 2005, general disillusion had spread among his supporters.But when in early 2009, Khatami again announced his candidacy for the Presidency, he was greeted with massive enthusiasm and support. The Ahmadinejad period of the previous four years had dramatically restored the fortunes of this mild-mannered, cerebral cleric who sought to bring Iran into the twenty-first century, end its international isolation, mend relations with the US, and take its place as the leading regional power.But who is this enigmatic cleric, so little known in the West, whose grasp of Iran's realities seems so much firmer than that of many of the secular figures around him? This book for the first time reveals the background, formation, and thinking of a man who may yet change the face of politics in the Middle East.

Ghoncheh Tazmini's profile page

Ghoncheh Tazmini is an Iranian-born independent political analyst who has worked with research institutes in Europe and Iran. Educated at the University of British Columbia and the London School of Economics, she holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Kent at Canterbury. She is Research Director at the Ravand Institute for Economic and International Studies.

"Ghoncheh Tazmini has effectively balanced? Khatami's personal and intellectual development with the historical and political context of Iran. [She] brings out very well the tension in Khatami between his reformist and conformist identities. This is a book that I have certainly been waiting for." - Richard Sakwa, Professor of Politics, University of Kent