The Kindly, Smiling Face of Iran

The hopeful enthusiasm in welcoming to the world scene a new, moderate man of peace and conciliation to the presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran seems infectious. Few are the governments, it would seem, that do not herald a new era of respect between Iran and other countries, an understanding that Iran's true agenda lies in the peaceful use of nuclear technology; strictly for the production of radioactive medical isotopes - Iranians suffer from cancer too, you know - and domestic energy sufficiency.

Hassan Rouhani, formally inducted into the Iranian presidency, has presented himself as the people's choice for moderation. For, his supporters claim jubilantly, this is a reasonable man, one who harbours no ill intent toward anyone or any other nation. A man of peace for a peaceful nation. A man with a long, distinguished career as an Iranian diplomat, even a former nuclear-technology negotiator. He has experience, he has internal respect, and there are huge expectations for his presidency.

Presumably he is expected, when he presents at the United Nations and addresses the General Assembly, to refrain from warning, as did his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that his country views the State of Israel as a vile interloper in the Middle East, an ugly cancer squatting on Palestinian-Arab territory that must be violently expunged from existence.

And Iran is the very country to rid the world of the presence of that Jewish anomaly that brings huge distress to the international community by its very existence. Israel represents an 'entity' so hated by the Iranian administration that it will not soil itself by referring to the country by its name, only as the "Zionist" entity.

According to Iranian news agencies, Hassan Rouhani's most recent comments about Israel were misattributed, and misread, mis-quoted and mistaken. He said no such thing as "Israel is a wound on the body of the Islamic world that must be destroyed", during Quds Day (Jerusalem Day) rallies, giving Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu fodder for repeating the misquote, feeding the negative score on quite incorrect Iranian representational belief about Israel.

As for Iran's involvement in Syria; it supports its Syrian ally, President Bashar al Assad, as a loyal friend, embattled by terrorist Sunni Islamists. At Sunday's swearing-in ceremony, President Rouhani took advantage of the opportunity to inform Syrian prime minister Wael al-Halqi: "no force in the world can shake the solid, strategic and historic relations that bind the two countries in friendship", assailing foreign intervention, as a "failed attempt" to target the "axis of resistance and rejection to Zionist-American plans in the region."

Hassan Rouhani was, in very fact, a creature of Islamism long before the current Ayatollah took power as Supreme Leader. Under his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who, returning from exile in Paris in 1979, brought the Iranian Revolution with him, Hassan became a seasoned representative of Iran's Shia fundamentalist Islamism. Under the current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hassan Rouhani has held respected positions.

He is no outlier, no representative of Iranian moderation, no alternate, conciliatory presence. As nuclear negotiator he used every trick he could muster to buy additional time for Iran's nuclear program to develop, undetected, covertly, exuberant in his perfidious manipulations to convince the United Nations and the IAEA that Iran respected international conventions while it was covertly advancing its unsanctioned nuclear program.

Under Hassan Rouhani, Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah, on a personal visit to Tehran to secure permission, was given the green light to enter wholly and unreservedly the military assaults led by the Syrian regime, destroying entire Syrian neighbourhoods where protesting Sunni Syrians live. And hurriedly depart, leaving behind those who have died under the pitiless artillery assaults of the Syrian regime.

President Rouhani issued a statement opposing terrorism and foreign interference within Syria. He pledged his support for the Assad regime and Hezbollah. He stated unequivocally that together Iran and Syria would confront "enemies in the region, especially the Zionist regime." The popular Sunni uprising against minority Shia Alawite regime oppression of the majority represents "extremism", "terrorism", and "foreign interference".

The Syrian uprising, according to newly-installed Iranian President Hassan Rouhani represents an American and Israeli conspiracy whose purpose is to undermine the "resistance" to Israel. "Machinations of the West in Syria are conspiracies against Iran", he claims. What has occurred in Syria does not represent an "Islamic Awakening", or the Syrian rendition of the "Arab Spring", but rather anything but a genuine popular uprising.

Terrorism, pure and simple. Which will not prevail, if Iran has anything to say about it.