On the evening of September 11, 2001, about two hundred young people gathered in Madar Square, on the north side of Tehran, in a spontaneous candlelight vigil to express sympathy and support for the United States. A second vigil, the next night, was attacked by the basij, a volunteer force of religious vigilantes, and then dispersed by the police. The vigils may have been the only pro-American demonstrations in the Islamic world after the terrorist attacks on the United States. “It was what we all were feeling,” said Arash, a young teacher I met; he had stayed home with his wife, Ava—these are not their real names—nervously watching the unimaginable television images from America. “But I was also worried: Would the Americans blame Iran for this? How would our government respond? Would we express sympathy and condemn the attacks, or would it be a Marg bar Amrika”—”Death to America”—”reaction? Finally, at ten o’clock, Khatami came on and expressed sympathy. What a relief!”

The statement that Mohammad Khatami, Iran’s popularly elected President, made was extraordinary—extraordinary to American ears, at least. “My deep sympathy goes out to the American nation, particularly those who have suffered from the attacks and also the families of the victims,” he said. “Terrorism is doomed, and the international community should stem it and take effective measures in a bid to eradicate it.”

Three months later, Ava, who is also a teacher, sat in the comfortable, rose-colored living room of the couple’s North Tehran flat, listening to her husband. She is a bright and fiery woman, and this was a rare moment of repose. “Do you want to know what I was really worried about?” she said, pausing for ironic effect. “Woody Allen. I didn’t want him to die. I wanted to know that he was all right. I love his films.”

But wasn’t she pleased by President Khatami’s statement? “Khatami! I don’t believe in Khatami. I believe in Superman.” She shrugged and raised her eyebrows. “At least in the world of Superman there is a certain logic. There are rules. There is no logic in the world of Khatami. He’s just part of an irrational system. At the top of the system is the Supreme Leader.” This is actually a constitutional office, occupied by the chief religious figure in the country. Its first, and most memorable, occupant was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini; since Khomeini’s death, in 1989, the office has been held, less notably, by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “But nobody believes in the Supreme Leader,” she went on. “Everybody believes in Khatami. Everybody votes for Khatami, who has none of the power. Nobody votes for the conservatives, but they have all of the power. So I like the fantasy of Superman better than the fantasy of Khatami.”

Mohammad Khatami is, indeed, a curious public figure. He is fifty-eight years old, and even his opponents concede that he is a gentle, charming, and learned man. He is a popular, charismatic politician; women consider him sexy, clean-cut, an elegant dresser. (“When he was elected President, I pasted pictures of him all over my car,” a young woman who was studying insurance finance at a local business school told me. “I don’t know why I did that. I never do things like that.”) He has been elected President twice, by large majorities; his first election, in 1997, came as a shock to Iran’s clerical establishment and launched what seemed a significant political reform movement. But Khatami and his allies have no control over the military, the police, or the courts, and there is a growing sense now that he is only a mirage—a courtly shimmer of intellectuality and moderation masking a brutal, obstinate, and impenetrable system.

In fact, the Marg bar Amrika chants returned to Iranian public discourse two weeks after the World Trade Center attack, when the Supreme Leader spoke in Tehran. Ali Khamenei is, in his way, every bit as curious a figure as Khatami. Khamenei’s position is impossible: his image is twinned everywhere with Ayatollah Khomeini’s on giant wall murals and in public offices, and he suffers in comparison. Khamenei, who wears thick eyeglasses, seems bland and slightly befuddled next to Khomeini’s eternal glower. Khamenei tries to emulate his predecessor’s vehemence at times, but his public statements tend to be pedestrian and vituperative, if such a combination is possible, and his reaction to America’s call for an anti-Taliban coalition in Afghanistan was typically obtuse. “You, who have always caused blows to Iran’s interests,” Khamenei said, referring to the “incompetent” American government and its “disgusting” campaign against terrorism. “How dare you request help [from us] in order to attack the innocent Muslim nation of Afghanistan, which has suffered and which is our neighbor? . . . The Islamic Republic of Iran will not participate in any move which is headed by the United States.”

Khamenei’s statement was not definitive, though. Two days later, at the Friday prayers at Tehran University, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani—who had preceded Khatami as President and remains a prominent political force—announced yet another modification of Iran’s position: “Despite all the differences we have . . . and if the United States does not want to impose its ideas, we can become a member of a U.N.-led antiterror coalition.”

There were further shadings by other public officials over the next few weeks, none of which quite acknowledged the reality of the situation: Iran and the United States were momentary allies. The Iranians had always opposed the Taliban; they were longtime supporters of the Northern Alliance rebels, especially the warlord Ismail Khan, whose territory, around the city of Herat, is close to Iran’s eastern border. When the war began in Afghanistan, Iran joined the so-called six-plus-two talks (the six neighboring countries to Afghanistan plus the United States and Russia) aimed at establishing a post-Taliban government; at one of the meetings at the U.N., Colin Powell shook hands with Kamal Kharrazi, the Iranian Foreign Minister—the first official contact between the two nations since 1979, when the Shah was overthrown. The Iranians quietly agreed to rescue American fliers downed in their territory, and allowed American food relief to be unloaded in a Persian Gulf port.

But the rapprochement was temporary; now Iran has been included, along with North Korea and Iraq, in President Bush’s “axis of evil”—a designation that the Supreme Leader responded to by saying, “The Islamic Republic is proud to be the target of the rage and hatred of the world’s greatest Satan.” Iran seems to have increased its support of radical Islamic groups like Hezbollah and Hamas since September 11th; in early January, the Israelis intercepted a ship, the Karine A, carrying fifty tons of arms apparently donated by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards—an élite militia controlled by the clerics—to the Palestinian Authority. (Iran has denied the connection.) This was a puzzling escalation, according to American security experts. Ship traffic in the Persian Gulf is closely monitored; the Iranians had to know that the scheme would be found out. Indeed, it almost seemed an intentional effort to infuriate the United States and burnish Iran’s radical credentials in the Islamic world. But, just as the Iranian government had taken at least three different public positions on the September 11th attacks, so it stood on rapprochement with the United States, support for the Palestinian rejectionists, and almost every other public issue: there are shadings and subtleties, conflicting statements and occasional outrages. A purposeful opacity seems the only rule.