"Muhammad Khatami, reformist president of Iran from 1997 until 2005, visited UVA last Thursday, September 7. He is the highest-ranking Iranian official to visit the United States since Iran’s revolution in 1979. While protests from UVA student groups were lukewarm, his visit to the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. later that afternoon saw about 200 protesters with signs depicting torture victims and touting “No dialogue, no war, only regime change,” The Washington Post reported. Yet Khatami’s Rotunda speech, given to about 140 guests and 200 or so listeners in the Newcomb Hall Auditorium, seemed out of balance with the heated criticism—he urged international cooperation and dialogue in disappointingly general terms.

Khatami, speaking in Farsi through a translator, gave a short history of violence. A reference to George W. Bush’s “whoever is not with us is against us” diplomacy got a chuckle from the crowd.

“Violence, apart from its historic, economic, political and psychological aspects, is an outcome of a particular logic, which is heard today louder than at any other time from the camps of all warmongers, despite their differing ideologies,” Khatami said.

Khatami’s religious ties were embedded throughout the speech. But he addressed religion in terms that even the most Jeffersonian secularist would approve. “What is most remarkable throughout human history is the fact that perpetrators of acts of violence would even attempt to alter the message of love and peace asserted by religions and cultures…in order to justify their devastating goals,” Khatami said.

Questions fielded from the audience teased out answers that Khatami’s hour-long speech didn’t cover. He said the U.S. was wrong to invade Iraq, but he does not support immediate withdrawal. Khatami said the greatest tragedy in Iraq is the number of civilians getting killed every day.

Khatami showed his allegiance to Muslim groups when responding to a question about his support for Hezbollah. He said media reports have exaggerated Hezbollah’s violent role in Lebanon.

Other stops on Khatami’s U.S. tour included Islamic conventions in Chicago and a United Nations conference in New York." (Meg McEvoy, C-VIlle Weekly, September 12, 2006)