Setting The Gullibility Stage

"This is a positive move for both inside and outside [Iran] by the moderate Rowhani.
"It is a special message suggesting Iran is ready for more flexibility."
Soroush Farhadi, Tehran-based political analyst

"We had expected her to come for a short leave but they have told her she is free. We are very happy, but we will be happier if other prisoners are freed, those who have not had a single hour of leave over the past years. We all belong to the same family, the family of prisoners."
Reza Khandan, husband of Nasrin Sotoudeh

"I commend this important positive signal by the Iranian authorities. We are eagerly waiting to welcome her in Strasbourg together with her Sakharov prize co-winner, film director Jafar Panahi."
Martin Schulz, European Parliament president

"We hope that one day all prisoners of conscience in Iran will be released."
Marie Harf, deputy spokeswoman, U.S. State Department

A change of heart in the Islamic Republic of Iran? Out with the old, in with the new!

Gone is the abrasive, crocodile-smile of former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The man who stood in the great hall of the general assembly of the United Nations, with a glowing penumbra around his head, bathed in the soft light of Shia Muslim expectation of the return of the Hidden Imam, when the righteous would be rewarded and the apostates, Jews and Crusaders abandoned to their sad fate, is gone.

Like the founding chief of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, honouring the United Nations with his presence, presenting himself as a dove, a lover of peace, defender of his people, gun securely in his holster, addressing the general assembly, Mr. Ahmadinejad too defended his people, and in their defence informed the gathering that his people had ambitious plans. They would succeed far more than Germany managed to. The Holocaust that evaded the Nazi era would bloom in his era.

What? No comments? No quiet consternation from among those assembled? No condemnation from the Security Council? No generalized move from those assembled to divorce themselves from such a devastatingly scandalous statement of intent? Seems not. Nothing in defiance of that blase self-assurance of the coming of the disintegration by violence visited upon a UN-member-state through the auspices of another member-state was reported. None.

Suddenly, now, there is a new, moderate, reformist president for Iran in the person of Hasan Rowhani. And he, as the new president of the Republic of Iran will be addressing the United Nations. His address will be far different than that of his predecessor. This is a man who sent twittering new year's greetings to Iranian Jews, as a sign of his temperance, his goodwill.

And he is prepared, with the kindly assent of Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, to help the international community relax its vigilance over Iran's nuclear aspirations.

As a sign of further goodwill preceding that UN appearance, a handful of political prisoners have been set free of detention in Tehran. The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran welcomed the releases. They now feel empowered to expect more such releases. Urging Mr. Rowhani to continue to take such welcomed steps to improve Iran's "urgent human rights situation".

Chief among those released is a lawyer who defended the human rights of other political prisoners, dissenters, those opposed to the regime that came to power with the Iranian Islamic Revolution. She was convicted of security offences, sentenced to six years in prison. In 2012, two years after she began serving her sentence, she was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Union.

The international community is ecstatic with expectation. A new, moderate president for Iran! A man who just incidentally was formerly appointed to represent Iran in its dealings with the IAEA over Iran's nuclear program was on record crowing about how successful he had been giving impressions that Iran would be fully pliable to IAEA concerns, when it had no such intentions, but in the process buying time to proceed with its real purposes.

Considering the well demonstrated fact that Iran is a repressive totalitarian theocracy and while it is very comforting to consider that there is the potential for decency in human and national relations, it is also a fairly good idea to remain cognizant that Islamists, which official Iran most certainly represents, consider treaties with non-Muslims to be non-binding. Speaking one tongue to one another, and an entirely different one to the non-Muslim world.

What is done throughout that process is not considered to be treachery, it is looked upon as clever manoeuvring, entirely permissible within Islam in the greater interests of advancing the Islamic cause. The tactic is called Al-Taqiyya, religious deception, pretending to be what one is not for the greater purpose of achieving one's ends.

Forewarned is not necessarily forearmed.