Rafsanjani was at least partly hostage to hardline opponents keen to sabotage his foreign-policy initiatives with precisely timed acts of terror in France, Germany, and Argentina. But Clinton and his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, took seriously the proposal by Khatami, Rafsanjani’s successor, at the UN General Assembly in 2000 for a “dialogue of civilizations” to open what he called “a crack in the wall of mistrust” between Iran and the US.