Khatami at the Swaminarayan Akshardham temple in New Delhi on Friday. (PTI)

New Delhi, March 24: Under attack from the rest of the world, including India, for allegedly pursuing a nuclear weapons programme in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran’s former President Mohammed Khatami struck back, asking what right New Delhi had to criticise Tehran when it was not even a member of the NPT.

At a question-and-answer session at the Indian Council for World Affairs in the capital today, Khatami was in fighting form. He eloquently argued that the western world as well as “the enemy within” the region had seemingly formed a compact to ensure an artificially perpetuated crisis that kept the Gulf and West Asia constantly on the boil.

In fact, Khatami openly admitted that Iran was happy that the “two great enemies of Iran — Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan — had been destroyed” by none other than Iran’s chief opponent, the US.

“We are not sad that we have witnessed the removal of these enemies,” Khatami said, pointing out that Tehran, however, did not agree with the approach that America had adopted in doing so.

But to a question by The Telegraph on the current stand-off between Iran and the rest of the world, including India, Russia and France, over Tehran’s determination to continue its nuclear weapons programme, Khatami smiled sweetly and said: “How can India, which is not even a member of the NPT, ask Iran to abide by it?”

When it was pointed out that India had never been a signatory to the NPT and Iran continued to be, Khatami laughed and said it was the Shah who had signed the NPT on Iran’s behalf. He did not say if Tehran was going to withdraw from the treaty anytime in the near future.

But Khatami stood his ground over Iran’s right to pursue a programme that gave it the benefit of peaceful uses of nuclear energy. He did not refer to India’s double negative against Iran and in favour of the US at the IAEA, but his meaning was clear. “We do not feel any threat from nuclear India.”

To be fair, Khatami’s comments, although critical of the Indian establishment, must be read in the larger context of his repeated pleas for greater democracy in the region — how regimes must reflect the aspirations of the people and how Iran must shed its nostalgia for the past and move halfway to meet an enlightened western world.

The Iranian leader acknowledged he had opened a secret channel with Bill Clinton during his tenure, but things had somehow gone wrong. By the time the neo-conservative regime of George Bush came to power, there was no more space for such initiatives.

In fact, Khatami looked like he was claiming the middle ground for Iran again, when — contrary to comments by his colleague and current President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad — he pointed out that the spirit of ethnic cleansing behind the Holocaust should be condemned, whether by the Nazis or in Palestine.