Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (centre) speaks to the media at the Khomeini mausoleum in Tehran ©Reuters
When Hassan Rouhani was studying for a doctorate at Glasgow Caledonian University in the late 1990s, staff and other students found him friendly and approachable. Then approaching 50 years old, Rouhani was interweaving sessions of academic work in Glasgow with his role as Deputy Speaker of the Iranian parliament (Iranian elites have long placed a value on western education). Rouhani, who made a point of removing his cleric’s turban when walking around the city in order to blend in, seems to have managed to commute easily between the cultures. One of his former teachers used to take him to the staff restaurant, deep in the curving glass walls and white concrete of the campus: “People would come and sit down and I would introduce him… and he would happily engage in a conversation with them,” he says.
The title of Rouhani’s PhD thesis for a degree awarded in 1999 was: “The flexibility of Sharia with reference to the Iranian experience.” That Rouhani should choose to emphasise this flexibility, while remaining within a conservative tradition, is characteristic. The question is how those apparent instincts, and a record as a pragmatic survivor at the highest levels of Iran’s jostling, suspicious political life, will manifest themselves now that he has emerged as President of Iran.
When Rouhani was elected in June 2013, and Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar, the Interior Minister, read out the result to a bank of multi-coloured television microphones, it surprised most observers. Sadegh Zibakalam, professor of politics at Tehran University and one of Rouhani’s campaign aides, has suggested that it even surprised the new President himself. But Rouhani was composed enough to declare that: “It is a victory of intelligence, moderation and progress over extremism.” He added: “A new opportunity has been created... for those who truly respect democracy, interaction and free dialogue.”
After eight years of the intransigent presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, many agreed, hoping that his election might signify a new opportunity to resolve the international tension over Iran’s nuclear programme. Rouhani’s remarks in New York during the United Nations General Assembly in September, culminating with a 15-minute telephone call to President Barack Obama, reinforced that impression. “The change is simply stunning,” said Gary Sick, former advisor to President Jimmy Carter during the Iranian hostage crisis, who met Rouhani for the first time at the New York meeting. William Hague, Foreign Secretary, has called the change of tone welcome. But Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, has called Rouhani a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” and others are sceptical too. The question now is whether he really wants to do a deal. If so, on what terms, and does he have the support from others in the regime to deliver it? Or is it possible, as some Arab leaders fear, that hardliners are merely using him to enter negotiations and to buy time, while their ultimate intentions are to advance the nuclear programme?
Rouhani was born in November 1948 in Sorkheh, a small, dusty town to the east of Tehran, into a family of farmers and carpet-makers; his father came from the bazaari middle class of artisans and small-scale merchants. After secondary education Rouhani studied in traditional religious classes in the seminaries of Qom, the main centre for the training of the Shia clergy in Iran. He married when he was 20, a woman picked for him by his mother when he was 14; according to reports, his mother has always been a strong presence in his life. He went on to study secular law at the University of Tehran, before doing obligatory military service in 1973. As a conscript, Rouhani was mocked for refusing, as a religious student, to shave off his beard. According to one story an officer who saw him said: “Aha, Fidel Castro is here.” Rouhani, who has a dry wit that Iranians love, is said to have responded: “Yes, I am Fidel Castro, in person.”
He did not mean he was a Marxist; the anecdote instead indicates his involvement in the republican opposition to the Shah, which included a strong religious element from the early 1960s onwards. Toward the end of the 1970s Rouhani left Iran, accompanying Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in exile in Paris in 1978. Rouhani belongs to a group of clerics that have been influential since the 1979 revolution—conservative, but modernising, with significant experience of life in the west. Those who know him well say that he returned from Glasgow distinctly more liberal than before; others report a fondness for Humphrey Bogart films, Thomas Hardy novels, and beautifully tailored clothes. However, while he accepted his Glasgow PhD in his family surname of Feridon, for the purposes of Iranian political life he adopted Rouhani, which signifies a cleric, or someone of spirituality.
In the 1980s Rouhani’s patron and mentor was the ultimate pragmatist and regime insider Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. In May 1986, during the Iran/Contra episode (in which the United States secretly passed arms to Iran via Israel in return for Iranian help with the release of hostages in Lebanon), Rouhani was one of the few people trusted by Rafsanjani to speak to the clandestine US delegation that visited Tehran. Robert McFarlane, who led the US team, was notoriously unimpressed with most of the Iranians he met, but later described Rouhani as “a cut above the bush leaguers we had been dealing with.”
Through the 1980s, factions struggled for ownership of the revolution and the Islamic republic. The left, helped by the pressures of the Iran-Iraq war, argued for greater state powers and redistribution of wealth. The right championed property rights and the economic freedoms precious to bazaari traders. Khomeini held both factions in balance, and pragmatists such as Rafsanjani and Rouhani positioned themselves at that balancing point, siding with the interests of the state, with an eye not on ideology, but on what would work.
After Khomeini’s death in 1989, Ali Khamenei became Supreme Leader, and Rafsanjani became President. Khamenei appointed Rouhani as Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council for security and foreign policy, a powerful position he would hold for 16 years; he had little public profile, but supervised Iran’s most significant decisions in that time.
It was a period in which the right gradually strengthened its position at the expense of the left and the pragmatists. Rafsanjani’s presidency was damaged by a currency crisis and by paralysis over vital economic questions. By time he left office in 1997, there was widespread disappointment in him. People flocked to a new phenomenon—the revitalised, reformist left of Mohammad Khatami, who called for press freedom, civil society and a renewed effort to normalise foreign relations, and he was elected on a landslide in 1997.
It was during Khatami’s tenure that the nuclear programme emerged as a new source of strain between Iran and western governments. In 2002, an exile opposition group (probably on the basis of intelligence from Mossad) revealed that Iran had for years been building a plant for the enrichment of uranium at Natanz, south of Tehran. Iran’s desire to have a nuclear reactor had been well known, but it was thought that it intended to import the fuel, probably from Russia. The enrichment technology gave it the capacity not only to make its own fuel—its stated intention—but also potentially to accumulate weapons-grade fissile material.
From late 2003 Rouhani came to new prominence as the chief nuclear negotiator. Iranian newspapers gave him the nickname “Diplomat Sheikh.” Jack Straw, the former Foreign Secretary, described him as initially inscrutable, but with a “twinkle of a smile” that would start to play over his face; “highly intelligent,” and firmly committed to the interests of Iran, he was nonetheless prepared to negotiate. Under Rouhani’s guidance, Iran agreed to suspend enrichment temporarily, as a confidence-building measure, having watched the destruction of Saddam’s regime in Iraq because of its suspected weapons of mass destruction. Many analysts thought a wider deal—a “Grand Bargain” which could lead to more normal relations with Iran, might just be within reach.
But the Khatami presidency was also a disappointment to many Iranians. The hardline right was able to block most of his reforms, and in 2005, widespread disillusionment with politics, combined with a boycott by many reformists, helped bring the right-wing populist outsider Ahmadinejad to the presidency.
With no experience of the world outside Iran, the new President was nonetheless determined to make a dramatic impact, making provocative statements on Israel, the Holocaust, and the nuclear question. He swept aside reformist and pragmatist officials, replacing most of Iran’s ambassadors in western countries. Within a short time Rouhani resigned from his roles as chief nuclear negotiator and secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.
A few months after Ahmadinejad’s inauguration, Iran resumed uranium enrichment, and the tone of the nuclear dispute worsened. Israel and the US threatened the Iranians with potential military action and after Iran refused to comply with the requests of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, the matter was referred to the UN Security Council. Rouhani had worked hard to avoid this step, because it would open the door to binding UN sanctions against Iran—which now followed.
Ahmadinejad’s re-election in 2009 increased the international tension. There were widespread allegations of vote-rigging, and the Green Movement rallied hundreds of thousands to protest against the result, the biggest demonstrations since the 1979 revolution. In the crackdown, hundreds were arrested and dozens killed (although estimates vary). Against that backdrop, and given continuing stalemate in the nuclear talks, UN sanctions intensified from the autumn of 2011, augmented by separate ones applied by Israel, the US and the EU. Taken together, these sanctions cut Iran off from the world banking system and led to a collapse in the value of the rial, inflation and rapidly deteriorating economic conditions for ordinary Iranians.
Rouhani’s election signals a new start. He was elected in June 2013 with 50.7 per cent of the vote, squeaking past the 50 per cent threshold required to avoid a second round, although he had more than three times the votes of his nearest rival. He was helped by the support of Khatami and the reformists, but he also ran an impressive campaign within the constraints of the system. Since the disputed elections of 2009, many commentators, inside and outside Iran, have lamented the increasing dependence of the regime on the Revolutionary Guard for suppressing internal dissent. At one point in the 2013 campaign Rouhani was asked by his rival Mohammad Qalibaf about the regime’s repressive treatment of students. He replied that he was a lawyer, not a colonel, a neat allusion to the fact that, as a former colonel in the Revolutionary Guard, Qalibaf was more vulnerable than he on this point. This made a favourable impression on many reformist voters, as did his comment that it was good for the (nuclear) centrifuges to spin, but the wheel of life had to keep turning also.
Rouhani’s campaign centred on his formidable reputation in foreign and security affairs. By contrast, his rival, Saeed Jalili, who had been Ahmadinejad’s nuclear negotiator, was attacked for his foreign policy record by another candidate in a TV debate—an unprecedented criticism of the regime’s foreign and security policy. Rouhani gathered further support for his statements in favour of female equality, release of political prisoners, free speech and moderation. “What I truly wish is for moderation to return to the country,” he said. “Extremism pains me greatly. We have suffered many blows as a result of extremism.”
But his election also represented an important decision by Khamenei. Judging by the roster of candidates who passed the vetting process (a process carried out by a body controlled by the Leader), it seems he favoured the idea of a President with significant foreign policy experience, with a view to resolving the nuclear problem. The narrowness of Rouhani’s victory is also suggestive. Given the scale of the alleged fraud in the 2009 elections, it would not have been difficult to skew the 2013 result by the 1 or 2 percentage points necessary to ensure that the voting went to a second round—and it is far from clear that Rouhani would have won at that stage.
So, without overemphasising the degree of manipulation, the election looks like a decision by Khamenei in favour of a candidate well-qualified to resolve the nuclear dispute—and since June, Khamenei has affirmed his support for Rouhani’s push to reach a solution. But it is perhaps more than that, too. Khamenei, notwithstanding his paternalistic and authoritarian instincts, is not a dictator along the lines of Robespierre or Stalin. He regards himself as a trustee for the tradition handed to him by Khomeini, literally a sacred trust. The huge demonstrations of 2009 must have sounded a warning to him. In that context, the result of the 2013 election looks like a deliberate return to moderation and to more broad-based, popular government.
As a new, moderate President with lengthy foreign policy experience and a mandate both from the people and from the clerical authorities for seeking better foreign relations, Rouhani looks like the best interlocutor the west could have hoped for. That impression is reinforced by the events in September at the UN General Assembly in New York. Rouhani and his Foreign Minister, Mohammad Zarif, impressed those they met with their seriousness and their readiness to compromise to reach a solution over the nuclear dispute. They made arrangements for new talks, which began in mid-October, and Rouhani spoke to Obama by telephone—the first time Iranian and US presidents had communicated directly since 1979.
Plainly, there are still uncertainties and potential pitfalls. Rouhani’s reluctance to meet Obama face-to-face is one dispiriting sign, as was his apparent evasiveness when pressed to condemn the Holocaust, only partly smoothed over by later statements and suggestions of mistranslation. Hardline factions continue to represent an obstacle. Just after Rouhani’s phone call with Obama, the leader of the Revolutionary Guards spoke out against nuclear compromise. And on 6th October, in what appeared to be an attempt to block a resolution of the nuclear dispute, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation claimed that four people were arrested for attempting “acts of sabotage” on nuclear sites.
In Iran, but also in the US, Israel and other countries there are groups with vested interests in the failure of Rouhani’s project of rapprochement. Some of the negative reaction in Iran to Rouhani can be dismissed as the venting of steam. What’s more, Netanyahu’s hostile remarks may have helped reconcile hardliners in Iran to Rouhani’s performance in New York. Given that Rouhani continues to have Khamenei’s backing, other noises do not have to be taken too seriously.
The likely parameters of a compromise on the nuclear question have been apparent for some time. They would include an undertaking by the Iranians not to enrich uranium beyond the 3-5 per cent appropriate for civil nuclear purposes, along with acceptance of tougher inspections by the IAEA to verify that they are keeping their word. The provisions would probably also need to include arrangements for the destruction, removal or supervision of uranium that Iran has already enriched to the 20 per cent level. Hawks in the US have suggested that there should also be some investigation of past Iranian efforts to pursue weapons technology. It might be unwise for the west to press that last point too far—all concerned would be better advised to look to the future rather than the past.
For this deal to work, the US would not only have to relax sanctions, but to accept Iran enriching uranium up to the 3-5 per cent level on its own soil. This would be a departure from the previous US position—still the Netanyahu position—that the Iranians must be pressured into a stance of zero enrichment. A deal along these lines would accept Iran as a significant nuclear power, within the provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for non-nuclear weapon states.
Netanyahu protests that this is unacceptable, because it could give Iran what has been called a “threshold” or “breakout” capability to create a nuclear weapon within a relatively short time period. Yet Israel may in the end have to accept that, if western negotiators come to the view that Rouhani’s presidency represents the best chance there is likely to be of a deal that limits Iran’s nuclear programme.
Of course, there are still major obstacles to progress in talks, let alone a deal. Not least, there is the Cyclopean anti-Iranian position of the US Congress, as well as the suspicion of the west among Khamenei and his advisors. There is, too, the broad support for the nuclear programme among many sections of Iranian society. The level of technological achievement which Iran has now mastered may also be an impediment, in the sense that a deal would now ask it to dismantle a capability it had acquired, rather than simply to halt progress.
But those who are now hopeful argue that a deal might have been within reach in 2003. They also point to the considerable benefits for both sides which would flow from normalising relations—all the more valuable given the turmoil across the region. For a start, removing the nuclear problem would improve relations between Iran and the US, and there are a series of further important matters on the US-Iran agenda. There are good arguments that the countries are natural allies—which spring, for example, from the generally pro-American attitudes of most Iranians, as well as the presence in the US of what may be up to a million well-integrated Iranian émigrés.
It is not too far-fetched to speculate that a deal could even improve relations with Israel. High on any list of US wishes in wider talks would be relaxation of Iranian hostility toward Israel, even if the US does not aim to secure explicit recognition of Israel. It is plausible that Iran could be brought to a de facto acceptance of Israel’s existence. That could lead it to withdraw support for violence against Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah.
For at least some in Israel, these considerable benefits might outweigh even the concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme. Immediately after the 1979 revolution, the veteran former General and Defence Minister Moshe Dayan and other senior Israeli figures urged the US to mend relations with Iran, and it is often forgotten that Israel gave Iran significant support throughout the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. More recently, Meir Dagan and Yuval Diskin (former heads of Mossad and Shin Bet respectively) have criticised Netanyahu for scaremongering over Iran. The two countries may never be on warm terms, but it might soon be time for them to return to the pragmatism appropriate to their mutual interests.
Reconciliation with Iran could enable us to see the deep problems of the Middle East in a clearer light, and ways in which that country, as one of the most powerful in the region, can play a part in the enhanced stability that is in western interests. Under Rouhani, Iran may already have helped, with the Russians, in attempts to resolve the problem of Syrian chemical weapons. Iran could be important in helping to secure a settlement in Syria. During the election campaign, Rouhani suggested that Iran could “play the role of mediator between the Syrian government and the opposition.” Of course, not all its actions have been helpful to the US and European Union; many believe the Qods force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards has worked through local proxies in neighbouring countries to attack western forces, for example, in and around Basra before the British withdrawal from Iraq in 2007. But there is a good case that Iran’s prime aim has been to help stabilise both Afghanistan and Iraq—to be expected, as the present governments of both countries are broadly pro-Iranian and were established with Iranian help. In any case, anti-western Iranian activity should be weighed against the deeply destabilising effect of terrorism originating in Saudi Arabia, for which there is much more evidence.
It would be wrong to portray Rouhani as a reformist; he is a moderate on the pragmatic model of Rafsanjani. But he is good humoured, intelligent and has broad international experience. He combines intellectual flexibility with a commitment to rock-solid fundamental principles. For the purposes of the nuclear dispute, it is better to have an Iranian moderate with Khamenei’s backing as President, who could plausibly deliver a deal, than an outright pro-western reformist at loggerheads with Khamenei and his circle.
It was a remarkable series of events at the UN in New York in September. It is seldom that a middle-ranking power, let alone such an isolated and embattled one, has taken the initiative in such a bold way with the US. This action has the potential to reshape the Middle East. One can only hope that the Iranian regime and its counterparts in the US, Europe and Israel have the courage to pursue the opportunities that Rouhani has opened up.
When Hassan Rouhani was studying for a doctorate at Glasgow Caledonian University in the late 1990s, staff and other students found him friendly and approachable. Then approaching 50 years old, Rouhani was interweaving sessions of academic work in Glasgow with his role as Deputy Speaker of the Iranian parliament (Iranian elites have long placed a value on western education). Rouhani, who made a point of removing his cleric’s turban when walking around the city in order to blend in, seems to have managed to commute easily between the cultures. One of his former teachers used to take him to the staff restaurant, deep in the curving glass walls and white concrete of the campus: “People would come and sit down and I would introduce him… and he would happily engage in a conversation with them,” he says.
The title of Rouhani’s PhD thesis for a degree awarded in 1999 was: “The flexibility of Sharia with reference to the Iranian experience.” That Rouhani should choose to emphasise this flexibility, while remaining within a conservative tradition, is characteristic. The question is how those apparent instincts, and a record as a pragmatic survivor at the highest levels of Iran’s jostling, suspicious political life, will manifest themselves now that he has emerged as President of Iran.
When Rouhani was elected in June 2013, and Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar, the Interior Minister, read out the result to a bank of multi-coloured television microphones, it surprised most observers. Sadegh Zibakalam, professor of politics at Tehran University and one of Rouhani’s campaign aides, has suggested that it even surprised the new President himself. But Rouhani was composed enough to declare that: “It is a victory of intelligence, moderation and progress over extremism.” He added: “A new opportunity has been created... for those who truly respect democracy, interaction and free dialogue.”
After eight years of the intransigent presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, many agreed, hoping that his election might signify a new opportunity to resolve the international tension over Iran’s nuclear programme. Rouhani’s remarks in New York during the United Nations General Assembly in September, culminating with a 15-minute telephone call to President Barack Obama, reinforced that impression. “The change is simply stunning,” said Gary Sick, former advisor to President Jimmy Carter during the Iranian hostage crisis, who met Rouhani for the first time at the New York meeting. William Hague, Foreign Secretary, has called the change of tone welcome. But Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, has called Rouhani a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” and others are sceptical too. The question now is whether he really wants to do a deal. If so, on what terms, and does he have the support from others in the regime to deliver it? Or is it possible, as some Arab leaders fear, that hardliners are merely using him to enter negotiations and to buy time, while their ultimate intentions are to advance the nuclear programme?
Rouhani was born in November 1948 in Sorkheh, a small, dusty town to the east of Tehran, into a family of farmers and carpet-makers; his father came from the bazaari middle class of artisans and small-scale merchants. After secondary education Rouhani studied in traditional religious classes in the seminaries of Qom, the main centre for the training of the Shia clergy in Iran. He married when he was 20, a woman picked for him by his mother when he was 14; according to reports, his mother has always been a strong presence in his life. He went on to study secular law at the University of Tehran, before doing obligatory military service in 1973. As a conscript, Rouhani was mocked for refusing, as a religious student, to shave off his beard. According to one story an officer who saw him said: “Aha, Fidel Castro is here.” Rouhani, who has a dry wit that Iranians love, is said to have responded: “Yes, I am Fidel Castro, in person.”
He did not mean he was a Marxist; the anecdote instead indicates his involvement in the republican opposition to the Shah, which included a strong religious element from the early 1960s onwards. Toward the end of the 1970s Rouhani left Iran, accompanying Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in exile in Paris in 1978. Rouhani belongs to a group of clerics that have been influential since the 1979 revolution—conservative, but modernising, with significant experience of life in the west. Those who know him well say that he returned from Glasgow distinctly more liberal than before; others report a fondness for Humphrey Bogart films, Thomas Hardy novels, and beautifully tailored clothes. However, while he accepted his Glasgow PhD in his family surname of Feridon, for the purposes of Iranian political life he adopted Rouhani, which signifies a cleric, or someone of spirituality.
In the 1980s Rouhani’s patron and mentor was the ultimate pragmatist and regime insider Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. In May 1986, during the Iran/Contra episode (in which the United States secretly passed arms to Iran via Israel in return for Iranian help with the release of hostages in Lebanon), Rouhani was one of the few people trusted by Rafsanjani to speak to the clandestine US delegation that visited Tehran. Robert McFarlane, who led the US team, was notoriously unimpressed with most of the Iranians he met, but later described Rouhani as “a cut above the bush leaguers we had been dealing with.”
Through the 1980s, factions struggled for ownership of the revolution and the Islamic republic. The left, helped by the pressures of the Iran-Iraq war, argued for greater state powers and redistribution of wealth. The right championed property rights and the economic freedoms precious to bazaari traders. Khomeini held both factions in balance, and pragmatists such as Rafsanjani and Rouhani positioned themselves at that balancing point, siding with the interests of the state, with an eye not on ideology, but on what would work.
After Khomeini’s death in 1989, Ali Khamenei became Supreme Leader, and Rafsanjani became President. Khamenei appointed Rouhani as Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council for security and foreign policy, a powerful position he would hold for 16 years; he had little public profile, but supervised Iran’s most significant decisions in that time.
It was a period in which the right gradually strengthened its position at the expense of the left and the pragmatists. Rafsanjani’s presidency was damaged by a currency crisis and by paralysis over vital economic questions. By time he left office in 1997, there was widespread disappointment in him. People flocked to a new phenomenon—the revitalised, reformist left of Mohammad Khatami, who called for press freedom, civil society and a renewed effort to normalise foreign relations, and he was elected on a landslide in 1997.
It was during Khatami’s tenure that the nuclear programme emerged as a new source of strain between Iran and western governments. In 2002, an exile opposition group (probably on the basis of intelligence from Mossad) revealed that Iran had for years been building a plant for the enrichment of uranium at Natanz, south of Tehran. Iran’s desire to have a nuclear reactor had been well known, but it was thought that it intended to import the fuel, probably from Russia. The enrichment technology gave it the capacity not only to make its own fuel—its stated intention—but also potentially to accumulate weapons-grade fissile material.
From late 2003 Rouhani came to new prominence as the chief nuclear negotiator. Iranian newspapers gave him the nickname “Diplomat Sheikh.” Jack Straw, the former Foreign Secretary, described him as initially inscrutable, but with a “twinkle of a smile” that would start to play over his face; “highly intelligent,” and firmly committed to the interests of Iran, he was nonetheless prepared to negotiate. Under Rouhani’s guidance, Iran agreed to suspend enrichment temporarily, as a confidence-building measure, having watched the destruction of Saddam’s regime in Iraq because of its suspected weapons of mass destruction. Many analysts thought a wider deal—a “Grand Bargain” which could lead to more normal relations with Iran, might just be within reach.
But the Khatami presidency was also a disappointment to many Iranians. The hardline right was able to block most of his reforms, and in 2005, widespread disillusionment with politics, combined with a boycott by many reformists, helped bring the right-wing populist outsider Ahmadinejad to the presidency.
With no experience of the world outside Iran, the new President was nonetheless determined to make a dramatic impact, making provocative statements on Israel, the Holocaust, and the nuclear question. He swept aside reformist and pragmatist officials, replacing most of Iran’s ambassadors in western countries. Within a short time Rouhani resigned from his roles as chief nuclear negotiator and secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.
A few months after Ahmadinejad’s inauguration, Iran resumed uranium enrichment, and the tone of the nuclear dispute worsened. Israel and the US threatened the Iranians with potential military action and after Iran refused to comply with the requests of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, the matter was referred to the UN Security Council. Rouhani had worked hard to avoid this step, because it would open the door to binding UN sanctions against Iran—which now followed.
Ahmadinejad’s re-election in 2009 increased the international tension. There were widespread allegations of vote-rigging, and the Green Movement rallied hundreds of thousands to protest against the result, the biggest demonstrations since the 1979 revolution. In the crackdown, hundreds were arrested and dozens killed (although estimates vary). Against that backdrop, and given continuing stalemate in the nuclear talks, UN sanctions intensified from the autumn of 2011, augmented by separate ones applied by Israel, the US and the EU. Taken together, these sanctions cut Iran off from the world banking system and led to a collapse in the value of the rial, inflation and rapidly deteriorating economic conditions for ordinary Iranians.
Rouhani’s election signals a new start. He was elected in June 2013 with 50.7 per cent of the vote, squeaking past the 50 per cent threshold required to avoid a second round, although he had more than three times the votes of his nearest rival. He was helped by the support of Khatami and the reformists, but he also ran an impressive campaign within the constraints of the system. Since the disputed elections of 2009, many commentators, inside and outside Iran, have lamented the increasing dependence of the regime on the Revolutionary Guard for suppressing internal dissent. At one point in the 2013 campaign Rouhani was asked by his rival Mohammad Qalibaf about the regime’s repressive treatment of students. He replied that he was a lawyer, not a colonel, a neat allusion to the fact that, as a former colonel in the Revolutionary Guard, Qalibaf was more vulnerable than he on this point. This made a favourable impression on many reformist voters, as did his comment that it was good for the (nuclear) centrifuges to spin, but the wheel of life had to keep turning also.
Rouhani’s campaign centred on his formidable reputation in foreign and security affairs. By contrast, his rival, Saeed Jalili, who had been Ahmadinejad’s nuclear negotiator, was attacked for his foreign policy record by another candidate in a TV debate—an unprecedented criticism of the regime’s foreign and security policy. Rouhani gathered further support for his statements in favour of female equality, release of political prisoners, free speech and moderation. “What I truly wish is for moderation to return to the country,” he said. “Extremism pains me greatly. We have suffered many blows as a result of extremism.”
But his election also represented an important decision by Khamenei. Judging by the roster of candidates who passed the vetting process (a process carried out by a body controlled by the Leader), it seems he favoured the idea of a President with significant foreign policy experience, with a view to resolving the nuclear problem. The narrowness of Rouhani’s victory is also suggestive. Given the scale of the alleged fraud in the 2009 elections, it would not have been difficult to skew the 2013 result by the 1 or 2 percentage points necessary to ensure that the voting went to a second round—and it is far from clear that Rouhani would have won at that stage.
So, without overemphasising the degree of manipulation, the election looks like a decision by Khamenei in favour of a candidate well-qualified to resolve the nuclear dispute—and since June, Khamenei has affirmed his support for Rouhani’s push to reach a solution. But it is perhaps more than that, too. Khamenei, notwithstanding his paternalistic and authoritarian instincts, is not a dictator along the lines of Robespierre or Stalin. He regards himself as a trustee for the tradition handed to him by Khomeini, literally a sacred trust. The huge demonstrations of 2009 must have sounded a warning to him. In that context, the result of the 2013 election looks like a deliberate return to moderation and to more broad-based, popular government.
As a new, moderate President with lengthy foreign policy experience and a mandate both from the people and from the clerical authorities for seeking better foreign relations, Rouhani looks like the best interlocutor the west could have hoped for. That impression is reinforced by the events in September at the UN General Assembly in New York. Rouhani and his Foreign Minister, Mohammad Zarif, impressed those they met with their seriousness and their readiness to compromise to reach a solution over the nuclear dispute. They made arrangements for new talks, which began in mid-October, and Rouhani spoke to Obama by telephone—the first time Iranian and US presidents had communicated directly since 1979.
Plainly, there are still uncertainties and potential pitfalls. Rouhani’s reluctance to meet Obama face-to-face is one dispiriting sign, as was his apparent evasiveness when pressed to condemn the Holocaust, only partly smoothed over by later statements and suggestions of mistranslation. Hardline factions continue to represent an obstacle. Just after Rouhani’s phone call with Obama, the leader of the Revolutionary Guards spoke out against nuclear compromise. And on 6th October, in what appeared to be an attempt to block a resolution of the nuclear dispute, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation claimed that four people were arrested for attempting “acts of sabotage” on nuclear sites.
In Iran, but also in the US, Israel and other countries there are groups with vested interests in the failure of Rouhani’s project of rapprochement. Some of the negative reaction in Iran to Rouhani can be dismissed as the venting of steam. What’s more, Netanyahu’s hostile remarks may have helped reconcile hardliners in Iran to Rouhani’s performance in New York. Given that Rouhani continues to have Khamenei’s backing, other noises do not have to be taken too seriously.
The likely parameters of a compromise on the nuclear question have been apparent for some time. They would include an undertaking by the Iranians not to enrich uranium beyond the 3-5 per cent appropriate for civil nuclear purposes, along with acceptance of tougher inspections by the IAEA to verify that they are keeping their word. The provisions would probably also need to include arrangements for the destruction, removal or supervision of uranium that Iran has already enriched to the 20 per cent level. Hawks in the US have suggested that there should also be some investigation of past Iranian efforts to pursue weapons technology. It might be unwise for the west to press that last point too far—all concerned would be better advised to look to the future rather than the past.
For this deal to work, the US would not only have to relax sanctions, but to accept Iran enriching uranium up to the 3-5 per cent level on its own soil. This would be a departure from the previous US position—still the Netanyahu position—that the Iranians must be pressured into a stance of zero enrichment. A deal along these lines would accept Iran as a significant nuclear power, within the provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for non-nuclear weapon states.
Netanyahu protests that this is unacceptable, because it could give Iran what has been called a “threshold” or “breakout” capability to create a nuclear weapon within a relatively short time period. Yet Israel may in the end have to accept that, if western negotiators come to the view that Rouhani’s presidency represents the best chance there is likely to be of a deal that limits Iran’s nuclear programme.
Of course, there are still major obstacles to progress in talks, let alone a deal. Not least, there is the Cyclopean anti-Iranian position of the US Congress, as well as the suspicion of the west among Khamenei and his advisors. There is, too, the broad support for the nuclear programme among many sections of Iranian society. The level of technological achievement which Iran has now mastered may also be an impediment, in the sense that a deal would now ask it to dismantle a capability it had acquired, rather than simply to halt progress.
But those who are now hopeful argue that a deal might have been within reach in 2003. They also point to the considerable benefits for both sides which would flow from normalising relations—all the more valuable given the turmoil across the region. For a start, removing the nuclear problem would improve relations between Iran and the US, and there are a series of further important matters on the US-Iran agenda. There are good arguments that the countries are natural allies—which spring, for example, from the generally pro-American attitudes of most Iranians, as well as the presence in the US of what may be up to a million well-integrated Iranian émigrés.
It is not too far-fetched to speculate that a deal could even improve relations with Israel. High on any list of US wishes in wider talks would be relaxation of Iranian hostility toward Israel, even if the US does not aim to secure explicit recognition of Israel. It is plausible that Iran could be brought to a de facto acceptance of Israel’s existence. That could lead it to withdraw support for violence against Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah.
For at least some in Israel, these considerable benefits might outweigh even the concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme. Immediately after the 1979 revolution, the veteran former General and Defence Minister Moshe Dayan and other senior Israeli figures urged the US to mend relations with Iran, and it is often forgotten that Israel gave Iran significant support throughout the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. More recently, Meir Dagan and Yuval Diskin (former heads of Mossad and Shin Bet respectively) have criticised Netanyahu for scaremongering over Iran. The two countries may never be on warm terms, but it might soon be time for them to return to the pragmatism appropriate to their mutual interests.
Reconciliation with Iran could enable us to see the deep problems of the Middle East in a clearer light, and ways in which that country, as one of the most powerful in the region, can play a part in the enhanced stability that is in western interests. Under Rouhani, Iran may already have helped, with the Russians, in attempts to resolve the problem of Syrian chemical weapons. Iran could be important in helping to secure a settlement in Syria. During the election campaign, Rouhani suggested that Iran could “play the role of mediator between the Syrian government and the opposition.” Of course, not all its actions have been helpful to the US and European Union; many believe the Qods force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards has worked through local proxies in neighbouring countries to attack western forces, for example, in and around Basra before the British withdrawal from Iraq in 2007. But there is a good case that Iran’s prime aim has been to help stabilise both Afghanistan and Iraq—to be expected, as the present governments of both countries are broadly pro-Iranian and were established with Iranian help. In any case, anti-western Iranian activity should be weighed against the deeply destabilising effect of terrorism originating in Saudi Arabia, for which there is much more evidence.
It would be wrong to portray Rouhani as a reformist; he is a moderate on the pragmatic model of Rafsanjani. But he is good humoured, intelligent and has broad international experience. He combines intellectual flexibility with a commitment to rock-solid fundamental principles. For the purposes of the nuclear dispute, it is better to have an Iranian moderate with Khamenei’s backing as President, who could plausibly deliver a deal, than an outright pro-western reformist at loggerheads with Khamenei and his circle.
It was a remarkable series of events at the UN in New York in September. It is seldom that a middle-ranking power, let alone such an isolated and embattled one, has taken the initiative in such a bold way with the US. This action has the potential to reshape the Middle East. One can only hope that the Iranian regime and its counterparts in the US, Europe and Israel have the courage to pursue the opportunities that Rouhani has opened up.
