David Menashri is the president of the College of Law and Business in Ramat Gan. He is also the founding director of the Alliance Center for Iranian Studies and held the Parviz and Pouran Nazarian Chair for Modern Iranian History at Tel Aviv University. A renowned scholar of Iranian Studies, Menashri has been a visiting Fulbright scholar at both Princeton and Cornell Universities and a visiting scholar at universities around the world, including the University of Chicago, Oxford University, Melbourne University, Waseda University (Tokyo), and the University of Munich. This interview was conducted at the end of December 2013 and first published in the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, a publication by the Israel Council on Foreign Relations which operates under the auspices of the World Jewish Congress.
IJFA: How should we understand the latest events in Iran thirty-five years after the Shah was swept from power?
DM: The question of understanding or reading current events in Iran is tied to understanding the Iranian revolution. It is a complex matter and we always have to return to the question of what was and is Islamic in the Islamic Revolution. Did the people who followed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1978/79 seek merely to establish an Islamic republic? I doubt it. I lived in Iran during the last two years of the Shah’s rule; I was doing research there on Iranian higher education and I can tell you that Islam was not the major motivation. What influenced people to follow Khomeini and to bring about the revolution was the struggle for social and political justice. It was a struggle for bread and freedom, welfare and liberty. There was another element, and that was the issue of dignity. Just pay attention to the pronouncements of Iranian leaders and to the number of times they speak about respect and dignity.
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Ayatollah Khomeini promised that he would bring Iranians to “the promised land.” On 11 February, they will mark the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. Things in Iran have not improved much. Iranians are not better off and do not enjoy more freedom. In the Shah’s days, it was a crime to speak against him. Today, to speak against the ayatollah is a sin. I do not know which is better.
IJFA: What about the issue of dignity?
DM: Today, Iranians do not enjoy any more dignity than they did during the time of the Shah. One of Hassan Rouhani’s election promises was that he was going to restore the value of the rial [the Iranian currency] and of the Iranian passport. I think that this is a very significant point: What does it mean when he says the value or dignity of the passport? It means regaining the respect of the nations of the world.
IJFA: To what degree was the ideology of the revolution truly Islamic?
DM: When we discuss the Islamic Revolution, we must ask: Is there one interpretation of Islam? What is the Islam? Is there one Judaism or one Christianity? Of course there are many interpretations of these religions. We obviously do not live today by the strictures of what Islam used to be fifteen centuries ago, or Judaism 3,000 years ago. Today we live according to our present understanding of the principles of faith. Over the ages, there has been a change in the perception and interpretation of the understanding of Islam.
One of the leading Iranian intellectuals, Abdulkarim Soroush, was the founding father of the Cultural Revolution in Iran in the early 1980s and one of Ayatollah Khomeini’s most faithful followers. At that time, they shut down the universities for three years so they could be 'Islamisized'. Later on, like many others, he distanced himself from the actual politics of the Islamic revolution. He once made a statement regarding Islam that, in my view, is most revealing. He said, “There is no one understanding that is better than any other.” He also, very courageously, declared that there could be no official understanding of Islam and that even the chief ayatollah could not tell the people, “This is the way to understand Islam,” because there are many ways to understand it.
The point is that when Ayatollah Khomeini returned, victorious, to Iran in 1979, there were seven grand ayatollahs in Iran. None supported Ayatollah Khomeini’s vision. The most senior ayatollah in Iran in 1979, Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Shari’atmadari, was under house arrest until he passed away six years later. The man that Ayatollah Khomeini groomed to be his official constitutional successor, Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, passed away a few years ago after having spent the last years of his life under house arrest too.
It is also important to make the distinction between the ideology of a movement in the process of revolution, and what the adherents of that movement do once they are in power. This goes for all politicians. There is a difference between what leaders of parties say during an election, before being elected, and what they do afterward. There is an American saying: “Where you sit is where you stand.” You are influenced by the realities of life. In opposition, you can spout any slogan you like. But once you are in power, you have to be more pragmatic: In Iran today, there are 75 million people to feed. Therefore, what we have seen in Iran is a gradual move toward pragmatism.
IJFA: Can that pragmatism be seen in terms of greater moderation — and will such a seemingly interest-based approach trump the deep-seated ideology of Iran’s rulers?
DM: Do not confuse pragmatism with moderation. Pragmatism means calculating risk and determining the cost of policies. I can say, by and large, that in Iran in almost every case—with very few exceptions—wherever there was a clash between the ideology of the revolution and the interest or survival of the state or ruling system, interest won over ideology.
Let me say a word about the differences in Iran. Foreign relations are actually a result of domestic policies and rivalries. I think in Iran a very serious and real struggle among different understandings of the interpretation of the principles of faith has emerged.
Today, the prisons in Iran are full of clerics and intellectuals. Like in any other political system, in Iran there are differences of understanding, different camps, egos, intentions, and aspirations. Generally speaking, there are two main factions in Iran today: one that is usually called “radical,” “extremist,” “fundamentalist,” or “traditionalist,” and the other that people usually call “pragmatist,” “reformist,” “moderate,” or “practitioners of realpolitik” — with significant variations and sub- groupings within each of them.
IJFA: What can you tell us about the so-called moderates?
DM: I would view them as pragmatists, reformists, or centrists, rather than moderates. In any case, Iran has a wonderful civil society, and I think the world is finally beginning to understand that the young people of Iran are the number one enemy of the Islamic regime. A significant social change has been underway. For example, today, some 60 percent of all students in Iranian universities are female; however, seventy years ago, there was not a single female in any university. This is an irreversible process. They are doing well in their studies; they are going to the best universities in the world. The arts are another example; the movie industry in Iran is the best in the Muslim world.
Interesting books are being published in Iran—at least whenever they are allowed to be published. Take, for example, the works of Akbar Ganji, a reformist and formerly one of the real hardcore revolutionaries who wrote a book entitled The Fascist Interpretation of Religion and Government after having rethought the realities of life under the Islamic regime. In that book, he basically said that the Islamic regime has some Fascist characteristics. Of course he went to jail. You cannot write such a book in Iran without going to jail. But the book was published in Tehran in many successive editions. This was under President Mohammad Khatami.
Today you can again see the beginning of greater openness. I once had a discussion about newspapers in Iran at the time of Khatami. One of our Israeli government officials challenged me, saying, “How you can speak of even relative freedom of expression when one hundred liberal newspapers were shut down in five years?” But in his very question lies the answer: Show me another country in the Middle East that even has a hundred liberal newspapers. Of course not everything in Iran is rosy but there are signs that a mature civil society is developing.
I was speaking with a friend who is a professor in an Iranian university about the dichotomy between reformism or openness and suppression. He said, “David, they tell you that we do not have freedom of expression in Iran. That is not true. We have freedom of expression. What we don’t have is freedom after expression.” That statement is more profound than it sounds.
IJFA: Where does Rouhani and his world view fit into this?
DM: Not only Rouhani himself, but the whole movement that brought him to power emerged from the circles espousing greater pragmatism. Now, Khatami was a reformist. Rafsanjani was, in my view, a pragmatist. And Hassan Rouhani is a student of Rafsanjani and should be viewed as centrist. But this is only one trend. Indicative of the other trend are the radicals, extremists, conservatives — whatever you want to call them. They may not be the majority, but they hold power. They have three things going for them, three great assets: one, they claim to be speaking in the name of Islam.
If this were not enough, they have a second asset—the Revolutionary Guards. So if you speak in the name of God, and you have the Revolutionary Guards, what more do you need? There is actually another weapon in their arsenal, something they have in abundance: the will to fight for the survival of the regime. And they are willing to suppress the people in order to maintain power. We saw that in
2009. What we see in Damascus today, in Syria, is actually the ideology and the practice of the Islamic Revolution. In 2009, when the regime in Tehran was under pressure, it said something very telling. In effect, they said we are not going to let them to do to us what we did to the Shah. We are not going to make concessions. We are not going to retreat. In other words, they were saying that the moment one starts with concessions, that’s the end of the regime.
By the way, the regime has another thing going for it, and that is the fact that there is no organized opposition. There are opposition groups arguing against one another rather than struggling against the regime. I think that this gives the regime the upper hand, although I don’t know for how long. If you ask me, at the end of the day, the people of Iran will make the difference. It won’t be American policy or Israeli policy; it will be the young people of Iran who are fed up with the unfulfilled expectations from the revolution.
IJFA: But isn’t there a critical time factor here? It may take years or even decades for this to ferment to bubble up to the surface. How can Iran be contained in the meantime, until the domestic discontent kicks in?
DM: That is the real question here. Mass movements are, by and large, unpredictable. One never knows when they will erupt. We didn’t predict the fall of the Shah. We didn’t predict the fall of the Soviet Union, which was not even brought down by a mass movement. Nor did we even see the collapse of Mubarak in the offing either.
There are people who ask why there is no Arab Spring in Iran. That seems like a simple question with a simple answer, which is that Iran is not an Arab country so there was no Arab Spring there. But the blueprint of the Arab Spring was actually made in Tehran. Until recently, Iran was the only country in the Middle East in which people really changed policy and changed their regime. What you saw three years ago in Egypt, Libya and other countries is an entirely new phenomenon in the Arab world. Iran is the only country in the Middle East that underwent two great revolutions in the twentieth century. There are not many countries in the world that underwent two great revolutions in such a short time — perhaps only Russia and China. Iran is the only country in the Middle East in which the people brought about a constitutional revolution, as they did in 1906. Of course, we must remember Mohammad Mossadegh in the 1950s. Then came the Islamic Revolution. I think it was really the people who brought these movements to power. So now the problem is that we simply don’t know what will happen.
IJFA: In other words we don’t know what will be the trigger—whether a rise in the cost of bread, the frustration of unemployed university graduates, or some other “last straw” event.
DM: I don’t think you can suppress the will of people for long. Of course I cannot tell you when it will finally erupt. There is a wonderful song in Hebrew. It says, “All of a sudden, a nation wakes up and starts walking.” I like the idea of “all of a sudden.” But we don’t know when it will happen. I think that we can look at Iran as two trains that have already left the station, one carrying the nuclear message, and one carrying the message of domestic change. I’m afraid that the train with the nuclear message is moving at a higher speed.
IJFA: So what do we do? Do we have the luxury of waiting?
DM: No, we do not; we cannot wait because we don’t know when those forces will erupt. We know that after it happens, if it happens, everyone will say, “Well, of course I knew it. The writing was on the wall.” Such talk can’t be taken seriously. We don’t really know. So whoever determines our policy should assume that the train carrying nuclear weapons will reach its destination first. I would definitely start with this assumption.
IJFA: Is the regime at all intimidated by the power of people in the way that it was, say, in Poland in the 1980s?
DM: Well, this brings us to the election of Rouhani. In Iran they don’t really have free elections. I don’t want to go through the whole process but there is a screening committee that has to vet candidates. In the last elections there were 686 candidates of whom eight were allowed to run. Ultimately, six stood and Rouhani gained the majority.
IJFA: So how can we understand Rouhani’s victory—why was he allowed to win?
DM: I would say that because the will of the people was so powerful, it could not be ignored. I think that Rouhani was allowed to go ahead because there is a limit, even for such a regime, as to how much they can act against the will of the people. Here we return to the point about Poland during Solidarity. I leave it to you to decide if there is a similarity or not. But I think that, of course, he was allowed to run, not because he was a favorite of Khamenei, with whom real power rests, but because there was no choice but to allow him to run and to win.
My point is that the struggle in Iran is real. Rouhani went to the UN General Assembly, and I met people who met with him there. The Iranians knocked on each and every door to say, “We are serious in our will for change, we are authorized by Khamenei.” Of course, they didn’t say how much and for how long, but they also did say, “We don’t have time.” Now, you can say that this is a negotiating tactic. But it’s really a question of understanding Iran. If you asked the Americans on what is it more difficult for the Iranians to compromise: the nuclear issues or relations with the United States, I am sure that most would say it would be easier to negotiate on the issue of US–Iranian relations and not the nuclear issue.
IJFA: Is that because this is an issue rooted in their national pride and their desire for dignity and empowerment?
DM: No, it’s actually more simple than that. Any compromise on the nuclear issue, at least at this stage, is reversible. Transforming relations with the US — even a single photo of President Obama shaking hands with Rouhani — is irreversible. And that’s the main reason they didn’t shake hands. When Rouhani and Mohammad Javad Zarif, the foreign minister, went back to Tehran from the UN, Khamenei criticized them on two issues: the telephone call between Obama and Rouhani, and the long and friendly meeting between Zarif and Secretary of State Kerry.
IJFA: So you think that the West is not reading the Iranians correctly?
DM: I don’t blame the West for not being able to read Iran correctly, because Iran is a complex country; it’s not black and white. There are many different faces to Iran, and it depends how you look at it.
I’ll tell you one thing that I believe that the West or the United States did fail to recognize when dealing with Iran. The West did not realize that it could have reached a much better deal with the Iranians at this stage. This is because the Iranians came to the negotiating table not because they really wanted negotiations but because they didn’t have a choice. And until then, whenever Iran was powerful, they rejected any negotiations. When they were weak, they asked for them, as, for example, in 2003, when American troops were marching toward Baghdad. They were afraid that after Baghdad, Tehran would be next. It was then that they came with what they called the “Grand Bargain.”
IJFA: And today?
DM: Today I think that what has happened is that both sides are weak. The weakness of Iran is met with American weakness. I think Rouhani needed Obama no less than Obama needed Rouhani. But even then, the West could have gotten a better deal. I spoke with one of my American colleagues, who said, “Well, you know, at the first round, they didn’t get what they wanted.” I said, “Of course not. There is no negotiation with Iran that you can finish in one round, because if they agree after the first round, it’s a failure.” By the way, you know how you can confound a bazaar merchant? Pay him what he asks for without haggling. He won’t sleep at night.
IJFA: You spoke earlier about the fact that that any kind of rapprochement with the US would be irreversible. What about the sanctions? Had the West stood tough on the sanctions and not yielded, wouldn’t that have heightened discontent in Iran and ensured that society became more desperate and even resentful of the regime? Hasn’t this reduction in pressure eased the problems of the regime by opening a valve and letting out steam?
DM: I think the weakness on both sides allowed for a solution with which both will not be completely satisfied; none of them has achieved what they sought. That being said, I think that the Iranians have gotten the better deal, not only because the nuclear issue is reversible but because on the other side, the moment you make a concession regarding sanctions, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to return to the status quo ante. That is the fear. American officials say, “Well, it’s only a question of $5–10 billion. No serious company will do business with Iran if they know it’s only for six months.” Frankly, I don’t buy that.
IJFA: So the loosening of sanctions is almost irreversible. Won’t it drive a wedge through the West?
DM: What is important for the United States today is to maintain the transatlantic alliance with Europe and to maintain solidarity between the European countries. The moment one of them goes its own way, everything will collapse. It’s not entirely impossible that this will not happen.
What brought Iran to the negotiating table, and I don’t care what the Iranians say, is the pressure. They don’t make concessions voluntarily, and they have never done so since the Islamic Revolution.
I ask myself if over the last thirty-five years there has been any Iranian act comparable to its decision to go to Geneva. I’d say that there is, namely, the decision by Khomeini to end the war with Iraq in 1988. At that time, he said that it would have been sweeter for him to drink poison than accept a ceasefire with Saddam Hussein, but there was no choice. And I think that’s exactly the feeling they have now.
Where was Iran just a short time ago? It was totally isolated. Its only ally was Bashar al-Assad and, while he was still alive, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Remember that Rouhani told the Iranian people that he would restore the value of their passport. Look at Zarif in his meetings in Geneva; he was sitting with the dignitaries of the world and now he’s the man of the year. Everyone sees Zarif and Rouhani as heroes. Everyone wants to shake their hands and be friends with them. And where are we? Rouhani used to say, “We have to transform every challenge into an opportunity.” And he took the challenge facing Iran and transformed it. I think that we in Israel have the bad habit of taking every opportunity and making it a problem. And that’s really what I want to say. We, too, have to transform challenges into opportunities.
IJFA: You are in effect saying that what Abba Eban once observed about the Arabs is also true of us, and that is that we never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
DM: I don’t know if there is an opportunity here, and if so, how serious it is. But look what happened. Where was Israel when the Geneva talks were taking place? Today we are the only voice constantly speaking, and no one is listening to us. I certainly don’t want to criticize this or that politician in Israel. I think the challenge of Iran is a serious one. But the policy we are presently pursuing is not the right one. Today, Iran has been welcomed back to the families of nations, although not yet as much as they wanted to be, but it is a start. And look at Israel’s position even in American academia. Look how Israel is treated.
IJFA: If you were in the driver’s seat in Israel, a policymaker, how would you have reacted to these developments? If you were the person advising the prime minister, what would you have suggested be done under these circumstances?
DM: Well, I can certainly understand Israel’s dilemma. When we talk about Iran, we make people believe that it is Israel’s problem. If we don’t talk about Iran, the world forgets it. This is certainly not an easy situation. Still, I think that Israel should have been far less outspoken. Our vocal stance does not serve our interests. You know, the Bible teaches us to conduct wars cunningly. Why are we not cunning, shrewd, and sophisticated? Why are we playing sheshbesh [backgammon] and not chess? We have good diplomats; we should send them to all the world capitals. Let them work hard. Attracting the kind of headlines that we have presenting a map or a drawing of the bomb has not been helpful.
Personally, I don’t think that the use of the term “existential threat” has served the interests of Israel either. What have we gained from it? We are sending two bad signals. We’re basically telling the Iranians that we are scared to death and we are telling Israelis — our own children — that if Iran goes nuclear, they should leave the country. About five years ago the Center of Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University did a survey in which they queried young people about what they would do if Iran went nuclear. One out of four Israelis — and these findings are accessible on the internet — said that if Iran goes nuclear, they would seriously consider leaving Israel. Again there is no easy answer. We are the weaker side in this, because no one is listening to us or taking us very seriously.
In 1991, I took part in several academic discussions in Israel that sought to evaluate whether or not Saddam Hussein would use missiles to attack Israel. Some thought he would; some thought he wouldn’t. He ultimately did. Do we have to take the same risk today? I don’t want to give the Iranians the right to make that call. So I think our interest in having Iran not achieve nuclear military capabilities is very great. I don’t think anyone doubts the significance of that.
I don’t have an easy answer as to what the policy should be. Even if someone wanted to attack Iran, they don’t have to be told that “all the options are on the table.” Believe me, they know it, and they know what Israel can do to them.
You know, there was a wonderful Clint Eastwood movie, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. There was a great line in it: “When you have to shoot, shoot; don’t talk.” Years back I said pretty much the same thing to one of our top officials. “If you have to do something, go ahead and do it. But why do you constantly have to talk about it?” Actually, an Iranian professor asked me at a conference in which we both participated, “Why didn’t you threaten Iraq in 1981? Why didn’t you threaten Syria in 2007? Perhaps because you don’t have the power to do to us what you are threatening?”
IJFA: That also ties into the issue of how the West perceives Iran and how Iran perceives the West, especially the Americans.
DM: As I told you, the Americans have the upper hand and they are the stronger side in these negotiations. I often wonder why America, and not the Soviet Union, became the great Satan for the Iranians. No matter how you look at the two great powers, at least in terms of Khomeini’s ideology, America was not as bad as the Soviet Union. America never took an inch of Iranian territory; the Russians did. The Soviet Union was Communist, atheist; America is Christian and god-fearing. But America was so deeply involved in Iran before the revolution and they’ve been identified with the Shah’s regime. So whoever was a friend of the Shah became an enemy, and vice versa. But make no mistake: The people of Iran do not necessarily consider America an eternal enemy. If you want to get really wealthy in Iran, sell American visas. Iranians want to come to the US and certainly don’t hate it. What’s more, I don’t think they all hate Israelis all that much, either.
IJFA: That is the next question.
DM: I don’t think that Iranians wake up in the morning and say, “Well, what can I do today to destroy the Jewish State of Israel?” That’s not the problem, even though there is great deal of criticism in Iran about this issue. There is a beautiful way the Iranians describe it; they say, “We have turned into a bowl that is warmer than the soup.” This being the Christmas season, I think that is analogous to the saying, “Why are we being more Catholic than the Pope?” In other words, at least some Iranians ask themselves why they have to be more Palestinian than the Palestinians. In 2009, they were saying, “Why should I care about Hamas and Hizbullah? My heart is with Iran.” So I think that for many people, this issue of animosity, even for Israel, is not the main one.
IJFA: But would it be an exaggeration, then, to say that where Israel is concerned, there is a great disconnect between the hostility of the regime and the religious establishment on the one hand, and the population, especially the intelligentsia, on the other?
DM: No, but you have to take into account thirty-five years of Islamic rule and propaganda.
IJFA: Brainwashing?
DM: I don’t know if I would call it “brainwashing,” but if you ask me, these attitudes won’t survive forever.
Permit me to return to the past. Years ago, all the children of Iran who went to school under the Shah were told to admire him. In Iranian textbooks there was a picture of the Shah on the first page, a picture of his wife on the second, and his son on the third. And it was these same children, once grown, who brought about the Islamic revolution. I think that the first generation of Iranians who went to school under the Islamic revolutionary regime has matured. In many ways, they are more secular than the previous generation and the regime has failed to impose its will and lifestyle on them.
Make no mistake; in Tehran, there are two spheres of life: the public and the private. Outside, women wear the veil but at home they behave differently. Iran has many faces. Let me remind you that there are also different ethnic groups in Iran. Half of the Iranian people are not Persians at all. Half of the population is made up of Azeris, Kurds, Turks, Turkomans, Balochs, and Arabs and much of the support for Rouhani came from them. He derived the most support from ethnic Sunni minorities, from the underprivileged strata of society.
IJFA: Do you see Iran as an issue around which Israel can develop mutual understanding with a part of the Arab world?
DM: We have failed to use the shared interest of Israelis and Arabs regarding Iran to try to improve our mutual relations. Saudi Arabia is very angry at the US and more concerned about Iran than Israel is. But they are sitting quietly and not making much noise. The Saudis are generally closemouthed. They were offered a seat on the Security Council; they refused. There are certainly some unofficial ties between Israel and some of the Arab countries, including among the Gulf states. But we did not really nurture these relations. The state of our relations with Turkey also worries me—and it is certainly not entirely our fault—but these relations should be better than they are today.
So if you look at the Middle East today, the threats have changed. Ben-Gurion started with his periphery theory that you have to be friends with the enemies of the enemies or the neighbors of the neighbors. Today we have to go to the neighbors themselves, because the neighbors of the neighbors are not really friendly. Now, the Arabs are still not friendly, but unlike in the 1950s, at least the governments of some Arab countries are willing to entertain the idea of talking with Israel.
IJFA: Looking one step ahead of the events as they are unfolding, if Iran continues on its course to achieve nuclear capability, do you think that the rules of the Cold War—mutual containment—could be relevant and that Israel could somehow come to live with the Iranian bomb?
DM: I’m not sure that the Iranians have already made the decision that they are going to have a bomb. They probably want to be on the threshold, so that if they decide to go ahead, they can do so very rapidly. That’s the safest thing that they might agree to do. The Iranians are neither stupid nor crazy. Iran is certainly not a crazy country. But do we really want to depend on their goodwill and let them be the ones to make the call? And there are some groups in the country that have apocalyptical visions, such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He went to the UN General Assembly every year. He never would have missed an opportunity to be in New York and make himself heard. Look at how he used Holocaust denial to make headlines.
A few years ago, in the middle of his term, I wrote an article in which I said that the best thing that the media in the United States could do was just to ignore him. He saw the reaction in the world. They fell in love with him. There is no way you could have avoided him when he came to New York. Every year there was a competition between different leaders for exposure and he was a big winner.
After his first trip to New York, when he went back to Tehran, he was sitting on the floor with a leading ayatollah—and you can see this on the internet—and said that during the twenty-seven minutes he was speaking at the General Assembly, all eyes were on him and it was totally quiet. He attributed this to “an aura of light above my head with God’s protection.” People who use such language should not be allowed near nuclear weapons.
We don’t know what the future will hold: Today the pragmatists are in power but tomorrow it could be the ultra-radicals. Khatami was in power from 1997–2005, and Ahmadinejad from 2005–2013.
IJFA: Some people — and not just in Israel — might suggest that on one level it was much easier for us to deal with Ahmadinejad who was totally unambiguous, or so it seemed. His hostility to Jews and the Jewish State was transparent. The fact that he denied the Holocaust and openly called for the dismemberment of Israel made him appear to be an especially diabolical figure, but Rouhani, of course, has a very different persona. How would you suggest we deal with this kind of challenge?
DM: To be sure, Ahmadinejad was an asset. And Rouhani is not. He is not a reformist; he’s not moderate. People always ask me about tomorrow, and I refer them to the past. In 2003–2005, Rouhani was the head of the Iranian negotiating team with the West, with the three major European countries. At that time, Iran suspended the nuclear program, or supposedly suspended it.
On the eve of the election, and, again, this is available on the internet, he was challenged about his having suspended Iran’s nuclear program when he was the chief negotiator. He answered, “I suspended the nuclear program? No, I completed it.” And he went on to elaborate point by point what he did during the so-called suspension period.
So we are dealing with sophisticated people. You ask if he really wants to compromise and make progress on negotiating with the West. I think he does, but on his own terms.
IJFA: Thank you very much.
