NEW YORK TIMES: ….In his campaign for president and again in recent weeks, [Hassan] Rouhani has made it clear that he is deeply concerned about his country’s growing economic troubles and is determined to soften the harsh tone and intransigent tactics of his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which have stalled nuclear negotiations and cut off relations with most of the developed world. But the question, as always in Iran, is the extent to which a President Rouhani can accomplish these goals…
Mr. Rouhani was defeated by the traditionalists after the nuclear deal fell apart in 2005 and left, politically speaking, for dead. He was a “sellout” in his critics’ eyes who had committed the unpardonable sin of showing weakness — though his supporters would call it reasonableness — in the negotiations with the Europeans.
In one of the most startling turnarounds in the history of the Islamic republic, he has managed to resurrect his career from that low point, drawing on connections that trace back to the earliest days of the clerical resistance to the shah. If he is to realize his ambitions of redirecting the country to the moderate course he has laid out — stressing greater individual rights, a relaxation of tensions with the West and the repair of Iran’s flagging economy — he will have to contend with precisely those forces that defeated him and Mr. Ahmadinejad… (more)
