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How Is Iran's Hassan Rouhani A Moderate? Forbes Following the May 19th presidential election in Iran and the incumbent Hassan Rouhani reaching a second term, there was an outpouring of Western mainstream media describing him as a moderate again. As described by the National Review, Iran's sham ... Iranian President Rouhani won reelection. Here's how reformists got him there.Washington Post How Hassan Rouhani Won in IranThe Atlantic Iran's Long Economic JourneyProject Syndicate TIME -Chicago Tribune -New York Times -Al-Bawaba all 834 news articles »

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How Is Iran's Hassan Rouhani A Moderate? - Forbes

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Charles Krauthammers analysis of Trumps Saudi visit and his foreign policy is as wrong as you would expect it to be:

That progress began with Trumps trip to Saudi Arabia, the first of his presidency an unmistakable declaration of a radical reorientation of U.S. policy in the region. Message: The appeasement of Iran is over [bold mine-DL].

Barack Obamas tilt toward Iran in the great Muslim civil war between Shiite Iran and Sunni Arabs led by Saudi Arabia was his reach for Nixon-to-China glory.

Iran hawks have tried to spin Obamas regional policies as appeasement of Iran for years, but this was never true. Mind you, these people think any form of diplomatic engagement is appeasement, since they are satisfied with noting less than total capitulation of the other side. As they see it, if Obama negotiated with Iran he must have also appeased them, but thats a ridiculous way to think about these things. That doesnt tell us anything about what actually happened during the Obama years, but it does remind us of the hawks knee-jerk rejection of diplomacy.

In order to appease, one party must make a costly concession to another in order to avoid an attack. If anyone was being appeased during the nuclear negotiations, it was the U.S. and the rest of the P5+1. To believe that Iran was the one being appeased requires forgetting that it was the one that had to make the most significant and lasting concessions to gain relief from punishing sanctions. All that the U.S. conceded was that Washington would stop some of the sanctions our government imposed on them. No honest observer could call that appeasement of Iran, but then Iran hawks havent been honest about most things during the debate over the nuclear deal.

During the so-called appeasement of Iran, the U.S. imposed extensive sanctions on the Iranian economy and persuaded many of its major trading partners to do likewise. The U.S. also armed Irans regional rivals to the teeth, and Obama set a record for selling more weapons to the Saudis than any president before him. On top of that, Obama backed the forces opposing the Syrian government for most of his second term, and supported the Saudi-led coalition in their delusion that attacking Yemen had something to do with combating Iranian influence. Everything Trump has done to date has represented a continuation of Obama-era policies. That is not a reorientation, much less a radical one, and thats the problem.

Trumps regional policies are awful in large part because he is continuing what Obama was doing and compounding Obamas errors with more of his own. The main and perhaps only meaningful difference is that Obama occasionally offered mild criticisms of the Saudis, and Trump wont shut up about how great they are. The policies are quite similar and similarly horrible, but for a partisan and ideologue like Krauthammer that is unimaginable. So we are treated to the fantasy that Trump has engineered a reversal from Obama policies that he is adopting.

Krauthammer misleads again when he claims that supporters of the nuclear deal promised that Iranian international behavior would improve. Hardly anyone in favor of the nuclear deal thought it would alter Irans foreign policy, and virtually no one made that part of the central argument for the deal. The Obama administration often argued that they hoped the deal might do that, but didnt expect that it would. Indeed, most supporters of the deal made a point of distinguishing between what the deal was supposed to dorestrict Irans nuclear program and subject it to a verification processand what it couldnt possibly do (i.e., change other Iranian government behavior for the better). It was opponents that were desperate to link the negotiations over the nuclear issue with everything else in the region as a way of derailing the talks and sabotaging the deal. They failed then, and so now theyre concocting a false story to try to bring discredit on the agreement now. The Iran hawks problem is that the deal is working as advertised, Iran is complying with its obligations, and the nightmare scenarios they painted about how it would fuel Iranian power have not come to pass (nor as they likely to). Even the Trump administration has conceded that Iran is complying with the deal. Some radical reorientation.

Unfortunately, U.S. policies in the region could do with a genuinely radical reorientation, but Trump isnt going to provide it. He and his advisers bought into the nonsensical D.C. conventional wisdom that Obama had been too soft on Iran and too hard on our clients. Trump may think he is making a big break from Obama, but in reality he is just doing more of the same. The people of Yemen in particular are continuing to pay for our shameful indulgence of the Saudis and their allies. The sick thing about all this is that Trump is likely to be celebrated in Washington expanding on Obamas worst policies, and Krauthammers absurd column is probably just the first of many to do so.

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The Fantasies of Iran Hawks - The American Conservative

New York Times

Senate Panel Approves Stiff Iran Sanctions and Says Russia Is Next New York Times Because Iran has complied with the nuclear accord, the Senate committee had to find other reasons to impose the sanctions, and linked the penalties to Iran's continued support for terrorism and its human rights violations, among other concerns. But the ... and more »

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Senate Panel Approves Stiff Iran Sanctions and Says Russia Is Next - New York Times

By Payam Mohseni By Payam Mohseni May 26 at 8:00 AM

More than 40 million Iranians voted last Friday in a presidential election to choose their countrys future path: between one of engagement and diplomacy with the West and one based on a self-reliant economic populism. With a 73 percent turnout, Iranians overwhelmingly chose moderate incumbent Hassan Rouhani in what was a clear defeat for the main conservative challenger, Ebrahim Raisi, and a major setback for the conservative camp.

The uncertainty and high stakes involved in the election yet again confirms the importance of genuine electoral competition within the bounds of the Iranian political system and the serious role given to popular input and participation as opposed to other Muslim states in the Middle East.

Scorched-earth campaign

This years campaign was particularly harsh as Irans conservatives undertook a high-powered offensive against Rouhani far beyond their regular campaigning tactics. The degree of mobilization, campaigning, investment and consensus-building within the conservative camp was unprecedented in the last two decades as were the serious charges against Rouhani that dragged the president and his entire administration through the mud with embarrassing corruption allegations.

These attacks pushed Rouhani headfirst into the reformist camp as he aggressively attacked the state in a bid to attract voters and gain popularity through anti-establishment rhetoric. While Rouhani had relied on the reformists since his 2013 election, he adopted their rhetoric in the final stretch of the campaign in a degree above and beyond his prior bounds.

Why would the conservatives mount such an extensive scorched-earth campaign against a strong incumbent president who lifted sanctions with the nuclear deal when there was such a high risk of loss and defeat? Was this a strategic mistake tarnishing both the conservatives and Raisis credibility? The answer lies beyond this particular election and in the larger war over the future of the supreme leadership after Ayatollah Khomeini.

Realignments within the conservative bloc

Win or lose, conservatives decided the battle lines be drawn between true believers and the increasing amount of conservatives peeling away to join Rouhanis moderate alliance that defines itself as anti-extremist. The conservatives strategy aimed to create unity among the faithful in the face of Rouhanis encroaching influence and instigate a factional realignment against the sitting president. It is the tenability and success of this conservative alliance that will significantly impact the future path that Iran takes not simply the current reelection of Rouhani to the presidency.

Indeed, Rouhanis 2013 election and the nuclear deal were largely possible with the backing of key segments of the conservative Iranian elite what I call the modern theocrats within Rouhanis larger power triangle. Rouhanis cross-factional alliance is a serious force in the battle of succession. If Rouhani successfully amalgamates reformists, moderates and conservatives into one cohesive whole, a broad elite consensus with a soft ideological vision and desire for global integration could dominate the state in stark opposition to the revolutionary anti-imperialist ideology of the supreme leader and hard-liners.

Rouhanis explicit thanking of Mohammad Khatami alongside Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri in his presidential acceptance speech could not be any more telling of the coalition he has built, all the more intriguing since Nateq-Nouri resigned from the supreme leaders inspections office before the election in a possible sign of internal disagreements. These two figures were once the respective reformist and conservative candidates in the 1997 presidential elections and it demonstrates the convergence of forces that has occurred between the once opposing factions in support of Rouhani. This broad alignment wants to strengthen its position to push through fundamental reforms and make a bid for the countrys third supreme leader.

For the conservatives, this would be a disaster. Their strategy was therefore to stymie any inroads of Rouhanis popularity within conservative forces and to fully bring everyone into the anti-Rouhani camp by waging a polarizing campaign against the administration. These lines, they calculated, would need to be drawn in the sand for the upcoming major political battles on the horizon irrespective of this particular electoral result.

The staunch attacks on Rouhani forced the president to adopt strong reformist discourse, allowing the conservatives to more easily rally the faithful against him. Directing conservative antipathy for Rouhani had been far from the case four years ago. While the likelihood of ascending to the supreme leadership for Raisi has diminished, conservatives as a whole still retain the power and have gained cohesiveness to push their own candidate for the position.

Looking to the future

Additionally, this election highlights a growing secularization and non-revolutionary, pro-Western trend in Iran in part a result of the very success of the Islamic Republic to modernize society. The greater empowerment of voices that are sympathetic to increased interactions with the West valuing secular academic education and emphasizing a liberal womens rights discourse all fly against the ideals of the Islamic revolution that pushed for an indigenous cultural movement and was the flag bearer for anti-imperialism.

This larger secularization will only increase in time as the conservatives have not developed alternate models of cultural production to bring about a popular change of direction perhaps most importantly because the very ruling elites across the political spectrum, including many of the conservatives, have themselves modernized and Westernized over time.

Accordingly, a well-defined identity with clear ideological boundaries will enable the conservatives to act as a coherent opposition group and more effectively take on a moderate-reformist coalition making significant inroads in politics and society and that threatened the conservative elite.

This election demonstrated that the conservatives will fight to preserve their base, provoke polarization and make sure they are not enveloped by shades of gray where moderates can act as revolutionaries and reformists at the same time.

Payam Mohseniis the director of the Iran Project and fellow for Iran Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is also a lecturer in the department of government at Harvard University where he teaches Iranian and Middle East politics.

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In Iran's elections, the hard-liners lost. What comes next? - Washington Post

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif after the International Atomic Energy Agency verified that Iran has met all conditions under the nuclear deal on Jan. 16, 2016. This week, Kerry warned the Senate that new sanctions on Iran could lead to the unraveling of the nuclear accord. Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

WASHINGTON A Senate panel overwhelmingly backed bipartisan legislation that would authorize President Donald Trump to put new sanctions on Iran while keeping the landmark nuclear deal with Tehran in place.

The Foreign Relations Committee voted 18-3 on Thursday despite concerns from former Secretary of State John Kerry and several Democrats that the measure could nonetheless lead to the unraveling of the nuclear accord negotiated by the Obama administration.

Kerry cautioned lawmakers to tread carefully in pushing ahead with new sanctions against Iran in the wake of President Hassan Rouhanis re-election last week to another four-year term. Rouhani is a political moderate who scored a resounding victory over a hard-line opponent.

His win is viewed by many as a referendum on his push for international outreach that led to the nuclear deal.

In a series of tweets Wednesday, Kerry said there is much up in the air/room for misinterpretation. This is not the moment for a new Iran bill. Kerry, who spent nearly three decades in the Senate and chaired the Foreign Relations Committee, urged his former colleagues to consider the risk of undercutting the nuclear agreement by imposing new sanctions.

We need to consider the implications of confrontation without conversation, Kerry wrote.

But Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the committees Republican chairman and one of the bills sponsors, said he recently reviewed top-secret intelligence that detailed Tehrans support for terrorism and other destabilizing actions.

It is astounding what Iran continues to do around the world, said Corker, urging his colleagues to confront the threat Tehran poses.

Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the committees top Democrat, said the bill is 100 percent consistent with U.S. obligations under the nuclear pact. Cardin, arguing for the legislation, said Irans leaders are taking the country on a path of destruction.

The committees bill imposes mandatory sanctions on people involved in Irans ballistic missile program and anyone who does business with them. The measure also would apply terrorism sanctions to the countrys Revolutionary Guards and enforce an arms embargo.

In exchange for Tehran rolling back its nuclear program, the U.S. and other world powers agreed to suspend wide-ranging oil, trade and financial sanctions that had choked the Iranian economy. As part of the July 2015 multinational accord, Iran also regained access to frozen assets held abroad.

Israel and congressional Republicans have long assailed the agreement as a windfall to Iran. Theyve argued the deal only delayed Irans pursuit of nuclear weapons and failed to allow the kind of inspections of its atomic sites that would guarantee Tehran was not cheating. Lifting economic sanctions saved Irans economy, GOP lawmakers added, and allowed the country to funnel more money to terrorist groups.

Yet the nuclear deal remains in place despite Trumps pledge during the presidential campaign to discard or renegotiate the pact. Instead, the State Department took a key step last week toward preserving the pact by issuing a waiver to keep the sanctions from snapping back into place. And the Trump administration notified Congress last month that Iran is complying with the terms of the agreement.

Neither Iran nor the other nations that negotiated the agreement have any interest in re-opening the deal, and U.S. companies could lose money if the deal is scuttled. Tehran has inked multibillion-dollar deals with Boeing and Airbus since the deal went into effect.

The Obama administration had opposed legislation that would slap Iran with more penalties over concerns that such a step could give Iran an excuse to walk away from the deal by saying the U.S. had reneged on its commitments to sanctions relief.

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Senate panel backs bill to authorize new sanctions on Iran - PBS NewsHour