Iran’s 'reforming’ Rouhani has fooled the West once again

The Telegraph

One of the more dangerous fairy stories of our time, popular with politicians and journalists, is that Iran’s new president, Dr Hassan Rouhani, is somehow a “reforming moderate” we can do business with – as in that deal last week whereby Iran supposedly agreed not to continue developing nuclear weapons in return for a reduction in the UN sanctions that are damaging its economy.

What those who fall for this overlook is that the Rouhani regime is imposing as ruthless a reign of terror on its unhappy people as ever: nearly 400 hangings since he was elected; teenagers publicly having their eyes gouged out; Tehran’s Revolutionary Guards still spreading terror across the Middle East, playing a crucial part in helping Syria’s President Assad to wage war on his people. And that vaunted nuclear deal is no more worth the paper it was written on than a similar deal in 2004, when Rouhani was Iran’s chief negotiator, later boasting how he had fooled the West while Iran secretly carried on developing a nuclear bomb.

As a puppet of Iran’s real “Supreme Leader”, the Ayatollah Khamenei, Rouhani may rejoice at having once again deceived the West. But the partial lifting of sanctions has bought Tehran a little more time to prop up a faltering dictatorship which Rouhani has no more intention of “reforming” than had any of his predecessors.