President Rouhani's overtures to the west are genuine. Iran voted for change

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/24/iran-president-rouhani-obama-united-nations

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"The Islamic Republic's problem is one of communication," a retired captain of Iran's Revolutionary Guards told me in Tehran three days before the June 2013 presidential election that brought a surprising victory to Hasan Rouhani. "We're horrible at getting our message across and communicating in a diplomatic manner with the west," he continued as we walked to his car, which displayed Rouhani's electoral poster on the dashboard.

As President Hasan Rouhani commences his visit to the United Nations General Assembly, he comes having started the Islamic Republic's most incredible public relations push in the west to date. With his op-ed in the Washington Post last week calling for "constructive engagement," followed by an op-ed in The Guardian by the former reformist president Mohammad Khatami Monday, and the release of over 90 political prisoners in the last week, the new president seems determined to change his government's communication problems and engage the west.

Policymakers in Washington and Middle East experts have spilled much ink in the past few weeks surmising Rouhani's intention and whether he even has the power to make any significant changes in Iran's policies given the role of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.

Having spent nine years in Iran researching among Basij, Revolutionary Guards, and veterans from all across the political spectrum, I know that Hasan Rouhani's recent overtures to the west are neither shocking nor are his intentions suspect.

What has been rarely discussed is the combination of the broad cross section of voters that coalesced behind Rouhani in June, the sheer number of the Islamic Republic's political elite who were utterly opposed to Ahmadinejad and are vying for a different direction in Iran, and the realization by Iran's political elite following the eruption of the 2009 Green Movement that a significant number of the population is unhappy with the hardline direction in the country, and in order for the Islamic Republic to survive, it must change its course.

Students, activists, artists, and political prisoners rallied behind Rouhani just before the 13 June vote to bring him a 51% victory, hoping to bring about change and some breathing room in Iran again. Ahmadinejad's presidency was characterized by the creation of a suffocated cultural and civic sphere where paranoia and repression ran high. As these young voters stood in long lines throughout the country in June, many donned both green and purple ribbons: green from the campaign color of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who ran against Ahmadinejad in 2009 and was subsequently put under house arrest, and purple from Rouhani's campaign color. These voters demonstrated en masse in 2009 against alleged election fraud and for the first time since the 1979 revolution, turned out in millions on Iran's streets and shouted slogans against the Supreme Leader. The Green Movement, as it became known, was a crucial crisis point for the regime's leaders: they could no longer deny that they were highly unpopular in certain sectors of society. <br /> <br />However, it wasn't just activists that rallied behind Rouhani's election, but members of Iran's most elite political and military institutions. As a prominent pro-regime writer who was a former Basij paramilitary member and a captain in the Revolutionary Guards during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s said: "It baffles me how our current political leaders don't understand that their hardline rhetoric will only bring more trouble on the country." A commander of the Revolutionary Guards was even more blunt the day prior to the elections:

Ahmadinejad's presidency has been the most destructive eight years in our regime's history.

As the economy worsened in Ahmadinejad's second term, and factionalism spread among the regime's inner circles, it became evident to the state's political elite that they could not risk continuing down the same path. I began to lose count of the number of Revolutionary Guard members who told me in the past eight years that they felt "ashamed" and "disgusted" at the direction Ahmadinejad was taking the country in. They worried about the future of the state they had fought so hard to maintain the past thirty years, and they said repeatedly in interviews and meetings: "this is not what we wanted to create".

That sense, aggravated by the debilitated economy and a frustrated populace, created an understanding in certain hardline circles in Iran that the Islamic Republic had to go down a different path, if for survival purposes alone. The Supreme Leader, Khameini may be many things, but he is pragmatist above all.

It is imperative to know that a significant number of the Islamic Republic's political elite, Revolutionary Guards, and paramilitary Basij were utterly opposed to Ahmadinejad. We must move away from simplistic narratives of the Revolutionary Guards and Basij as hardline monolithic entities and instead understand that there are various, and often time competing, visions for the future of the Islamic Republic among Iran's political elite.

The regime's acute sense of survival in the face of tremendous domestic and international pressures, coupled with a political elite that was marginalized the past eight years, but is now regaining its footing and wants to engage with the world, should be encouraging for the west.

More than anything, the Obama administration should listen to the voice of Iran's students, artists, activists, and political prisoners, who have called in unison for engagement and the eradication of economic sanctions. They are the force that will eventually bring change in Iran. Engagement and the easing of sanctions will allow these social players to re-create a civic sphere after years of repression and continue to put internal pressure on the Islamic Republic to change and to meet the demands of its young population.

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