Iranian Presidents and Moderacy

Iranian President-elect Hasan Rouhani speaks with the media during a news conference in Tehran (Photo: REUTERS/Fars News/Majid Hagdost)

Wonderful news; the world can finally begin to exhale. The suspense and the tension can begin to evaporate. All will be well. The belligerently offensive Islamic Republic of Iran will become more temperate, more sensitive to the fears of the international community about its nuclear intentions. More inclined, with the ascension of a new president -- less inclined to confrontation than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- to believe Iran's assertions that its defiance on the nuclear file has nothing to do with plans to perfect nuclear warheads; none whatever.

"During the confidence-building era we entered the nuclear club, and despite the suspension [of uranium enrichment], we imported all the materials needed for our nuclear activities of the country ... The solution is to prove to the entire world that we want the power plants for electricity. Afterwards we can proceed with other activities...
"We had one overt policy, which was one of negotiation and confidence-building, and a covert policy, which was continuation of the activities."
Abdollah Ramezanzadeh: Hassan Rouhani's nuclear strategy, 2008

The White House appears almost euphoric with the news of president-elect Rouhani's presidential win. Obviously, quite obviously, now the stage will be set for the regime to "make responsible choices that create a better future for all Iranians". And so, the United States is prepared to "engage the Iranian government in order to reach a diplomatic solution" to "the international community's concerns about Iran's nuclear program."

Because, slow-learner, the incoming Hassan Rouhani is so obviously a "moderate", a "centrist", a "reformist". As was so richly evidenced during his tenure as nuclear negotiator, when he represented a "more cooperative" Islamic Republic. But not, however, if one reads back to that 2008 statement by Adollah Ramezanzadeh, explicitly revelatory and at the same time, delightedly revelling in the manner in which Iran's then-nuclear negotiator pulled the wool over his interloctors' bedazzled eyes.

The man's personal history reveals all, moreover: He was a cleric who lived in exile in Paris alongside Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who returned to Tehran to strike the Islamic Revolution and the downfall of the Shah of Iran, to restore a theocratic Islamist rule to the country in place of a largely secular one which was friendly with the West and with Israel; cardinal sins, both. He is a proven regime loyalist, complicit with the Supreme Council and the Supreme Leader.

A member of the Supreme Defence Council, he was largely responsible for the ongoing Iran-Iraq war which took countless lives of young men and boys deployed by the regime as battlefield fodder for the Great Cause of Shia-led Islamism. He was Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Council in 1989, and chief nuclear negotiator following that. How much more proof is required to consolidate his position as a loyalist of Ayatollah Khamenei, the real power of Iran's nuclear program?

It was his mission to drive a political wedge in dealings with Iran between the EU3 - Britain, France and Germany - and the United States. The strategy being "cooperation with Europe" and opposition to the United States. During the presidential race Mr. Rouhani projected an image of strategic reasonableness, and thus endeared himself as a 'reasonable' alternative to the other, more emphatically vocal hard-line Islamists, garnering to himself votes to defeat the Supreme Leader's first choice candidates.

In the final analysis, the last-choice regime-approved candidate will prove to the Supreme Leader that he has a winner in place to prosecute the ongoing platform of the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear determination. His modest stance of reasonableness will help quell Western fears, and eventually lift sanctions, giving the regime some needed breathing room and opportunity to rebuild its economy while it surreptitiously continues its nuclear trajectory as it has done so often in the past.

It's a winning formula for Iran. The West never fails in its willingness to be duped, yet again.