The Iranian insider who understands the outside world
He was just eighteen. He was being smuggled across the frontier. Out of Iran – into Iraq. You can’t be choosy. The man organising the smuggling told our young man – lose the turban, you’ll stand out.Our young man was, is, a devout Shia, now a cleric, yet he took off his turban without hesitation.
No longer the tall poppy, the smuggling operation worked a dream. He got to complete his mission and meet the man he’d come to see.
That youth was Hassan Rouhani. His rendezvous was with Ayatollah Khomeini, then in exile.
Tellingly, Rouhani – now President Rouhani, picks out this episode and has written about it to illustrate the need for pragmatism.
Fast forward a few years from smuggling to studying and Glasgow. For his doctoral thesis at the city’s Caledonian university, Hassan Rouhani explored not Sharia law per se – but the degree of flexibility it can afford.
A clue again on the importance of the possible, the pragmatic, to this man.
Hit the fast forward once more and now Hassan Rouhani is out of academia and into politics at the very sharp end, leading the apparently deadlocked nuclear talks between Iran and the wider world, in 2005.
He it was who came up with, and duly delivered, the unexpected and bold move – to suspend key aspects of the nuclear programme . He sold it to the sceptics in Tehran. Pragmatism in practice.
It ended badly, the west came up with little but more demands in return. Rouhani’s more anti-western critics in Tehran flayed him for being a sop and a sell-out to the perfidious “tie and aftershave” men from the US, EU and beyond.
So he did his time in the wilderness but was it such a crime?
Today – inauguration day – that move looks rather less of an error, more another credential for this apparently pragmatic cleric-cum-dipomat-cum-president. Proof that, for better or worse, he could cut a deal with the west and bring the west-haters at home with him.
Since winning the election he’s done it again. Ignoring the official make-believe world, he marched into parliament and just said what everyone knows – that the official inflation rate of 32 per cent is a fiction and a lie serving no desirable purpose: it’s 42 per cent at least. Realism. Pragmatism.
So today, in announcing his cabinet for approval. President Rouhani will likely appoint others like him, who have studied abroad. Men (yes, they will be men) who are not just technically fluent in the English language, but culturally aware to the nuances of western suspicion, thought, action.
So expect change, radically different from the wild rhetoric of President Ahmadinejad’s eight years. But do not be naïve enough to think this makes things easier for the west.
No – Ahmadinejad’s often pantomime-style was easy – even desirable for US and Israeli hardliners – a living confirmation of their paranoia. Now it’s far more subtle. Real experience and understanding of the west is what’s now unexpectedly on offer from Iran. And from men every bit a part of the system here.
Remember for 16 years Rouhani was a central figure on Iran’s powerful National Security Council. After that came years as key advisor to – guess who? Yes, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
In short, as he said yesterday, President Rouhani is no outsider. What he didn’t have to say, is that he’s an insider Iranian who understands the outsiders in Washington and Brussels.
Iranian voters just upped the national team’s game at the ballot-box. The west will need to shape up in response. It’s game on – and the new Iranian team don’t just speak our lingo – they understand our tactics.
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