Can Rouhani Deliver?

Iran's new and moderate President Hassan Rouhani tries to ease tension with the US and resolve the nuclear dispute. But what are his chances of succeeding? Said Amir Arjomand takes a look

By Said Amir Arjomand

After world powers' meeting in Geneva for nuclear talks with Iran, the world now awaits the follow-up to the phone call between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and US President Barack Obama after Rouhani's visit to the United Nations General Assembly in September. That brief conversation – the first between the two countries' presidents since 1979 – recalls the last attempt to revive bilateral diplomacy, undertaken 12 years ago by Iran's then-President Mohammad Khatami. In both episodes, a missing handshake symbolized the countries' persistent rift.

Back then, Khatami and Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi "went shopping", rather than attend a cultural event at the Asia Society and risk crossing paths – and shaking hands – with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. This time, despite Iran's avoidance of a presidential handshake at the UN, Rouhani delivered a major address at the Asia Society asserting that his government would pursue policies of "moderation and common sense" and would be willing to work with the West on resolving questions about its nuclear program.

Meaningful handshake

Moreover, handshakes were exchanged by the two countries' foreign ministers, when John Kerry and Javad Zarif, joined by the European Union's top diplomat, Catherine Ashton, held a formal meeting to organize the upcoming nuclear negotiations in Geneva. Kerry and Zarif shook hands again when the two met separately.

US Secretary of State John Kerry (L) and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif (R) attend a meeting of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany about Iran's nuclear program September 26, 2013 on the sidelines of the General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York (photo: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images)
"Heroic flexibility": The US are currently considering to hold off on any more sanctions against Iran and let delicate diplomatic talks over Tehran's nuclear program unfold. Pictured: US Secretary of State Kerry and Iran's Foreign Minister Zarif attend a meeting about Iran's nuclear programme at UN headquarters in New York

So what changed? Back then, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had forbidden Khatami to speak with the Americans. Rouhani, by contrast, proceeded with Khamenei's blessing.

Khamenei, concerned with repairing the damage caused by his acceptance of the fraudulent reelection in 2009 of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was willing to accept the victory in June of Rouhani, a conservative reformist whom he trusted. He must have calculated that the new president would have to ameliorate the consequences of Ahmadinejad's foreign-policy freelancing and economic mismanagement, which has had as much to do with the collapse of the Iranian economy as US-led international sanctions.

There had been earlier attempts to improve relations with the Americans. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who became Iran's president after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's death in 1989, sought such an outcome. In 1995, he sent clear signals of a desire to restore diplomatic relations. President Bill Clinton's administration ignored the overtures and allowed the US Congress to take the initiative. Congress responded by unanimously adopting the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act of 1996.

Rafsanjani was in a much stronger position vis-à-vis Khamenei, who had just been selected to succeed Khomeini as Supreme Leader, than any of Iran's subsequent presidents. His trouble was with powerful opponents in Iran's security apparatus, who sabotaged his pragmatic foreign-policy initiatives by staging terrorist attacks in France, Germany, and Argentina.

An failed attempt to open a crack

Khatami's proposal for a "dialogue among civilizations" in 2000 was an attempt to open a crack in what he described as the wall of mistrust that continued to separate Iran and the US. It was only in the last year of his second term that Clinton made a serious effort to respond to Khatami. But Khatami lacked the support of Khamenei, who firmly opposed his reforms.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks at a meeting of Revolutionary Guard commanders (photo: AP Photo/Office of the Supreme Leader)
There's no mistaking the desire of Iran's new president and his allies to open greater contacts with Washington over nuclear talks and possibly other regional crises such as Syria. The only messages that really matter, though, come from the ultimate decision-maker in TehranAyatollah Khamenei. Now, it appears Khamenei is giving President Hasan Rouhani critical room, for the moment at least, to seek potentially ground breaking overtures with Washington

The aggressive rhetoric of Clinton's successor, George W. Bush, who called Iran part of an "axis of evil" prior to the US-led invasion of Iraq, made Khamenei apprehensive, and he endorsed an initiative for a dialogue with the Americans in 2003. The Bush administration, in thrall to the idea of regime change, ignored this initiative and rejected the "Big Deal" on nuclear energy negotiated with the EU-3 in Paris in November 2004 by Rouhani, who was then Khamenei's representative and Chairman of Iran's National Security Council. The formal rejection of the Iran-EU nuclear agreement in February 2005 was an unintended gift to Iran's hardliners, led by Ahmadinejad.

The return of hardliners after the ascendancy of moderates is a little-understood but fairly typical feature of twentieth-century revolutions. Ahmadinejad's election in 2005 was a throwback to the populism of Khomeini's Islamic Revolution and his cult of revolutionary martyrs. It went hand in hand with an aggressive foreign policy and a determined nuclear strategy of uranium enrichment that repeatedly frustrated EU negotiators and forced world leaders to fall into line behind America's crippling sanctions regime.

There can be no doubt that before coming to the US, Iran's new president studied Obama's letter to Khamenei, who promised "heroic flexibility" in negotiations. With Khamenei's support, Rouhani will be able to rein in recalcitrant forces in Iran's power structure in a way that his pragmatic predecessors, Rafsanjani and Khatami, could not. More than any Iranian president since 1979, Rouhani can deliver his part of the bargain – that is, if and when a bargain is struck.

Said Amir Arjomand

© Project Syndicate 2013

Said Amir Arjomand, the founder of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies, is a professor of sociology at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.

Qantara.de editor: Lewis Gropp