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pressing the same aims. "Rouhani came here today to cheat the world, and unfortunately many people were willing to
be cheated," Israel's minister of intelligence and internal affairs, Yuval Steinitz, said Tuesday at the United Nations.
Gary Samore, a former Obama adviser, and now the president of United Against Nuclear Iran
<http://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.comk , said the substance was "very similar to Ahmadinejad's, but he says it in a
much kinder and gentler way."
"That's the definition of a charm offensive," he continued.
To foreigners, Mr. Rouhani may seem like something of a paradox. He wears the garb of a cleric, though with high-end
dress shoes. He prefers to be called Dr. Rouhani, for his doctorate in law, rather than by his clerical title. His office has
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used Twitter to congratulate Iran's women's volleyball team and blast excerpts from his address at the General
Assembly.
"He's far from being a traditional Shia cleric," said M. Hossein Hafezian, who worked with him for nearly 10 years at his
Center for Strategic Research <http://www.csr.irkenter.aspx?Ing=en> in Tehran. He described Mr. Rouhani as a
political "insider and a moderate, but one who has shunned being called "westernized or liberal, because that would be
a curse."
One diplomat here described him as so composed while meeting one of his Western counterparts that he seemed hard
to grasp. The diplomat, who asked not to be identified because of the delicacy of the bilateral meeting, said he was
struck by the fact that Mr. Rouhani "didn't have advisers whispering in his ears the whole time."
Mr. Rouhani's interest in lowering tensions with the West is most directly helped by his closest aides. He has surrounded
himself with men, who, like other Iranian bureaucrats, favor trim beards and suits without ties, but who speak the
language of the American elite. Several, like his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, were educated here.
Perhaps the most unexpected — and closely guarded — encounter this week was attended by Mr. Rouhani's chief of
staff, Mohammad Nahavandian. He attended a breakfast meeting on Tuesday, organized at his request, with about a
dozen New York business leaders, most of them retired, from the banking and energy sectors. His message, according to
the breakfast organizer, was that Iran is now pro-business and welcomes private investment, if and when sanctions are
lifted.
"This was the beginning of exploring if something like that could happen," the organizer said, asking to remain
anonymous because of the delicacy of the gathering.
Still, said William H. Luers, a retired United States ambassador who now runs an advocacy group called The Iran Project
<http://theiranproject.orgh , Mr. Rouhani's greatest challenge would be to convince skeptics in Iran and the United
States. "He has to demonstrate this is more than a charm offensive, that he means what he says, that if there's a
response he's ready to be engaged," Mr. Luers said.
The same applies to Mr. Obama, he added. "It's too far along," Mr. Luers said. "We've said too much on both sides.
There's too much distrust to just say we had a good conversation."
Article 3.
The Washington Post
The Iranian 'moderate'
Charles Krauthammer <http://www.washingtonpost.com/charles-krauthammer/2011/02/24/ADJkW7B_page.html>
September 26, 2013 -- The search, now 30 years old, for Iranian "moderates" goes on. Amid the enthusiasm of the
latest sighting, it's worth remembering that the highlight of the Iran-contra arms-for-hostages debacle was the secret
trip to Tehran taken by Robert McFarlane chttp://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/11/us/mcfarlane-took-cake-and-bible-to-
teheran-ex-cia-man-says.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm> , President Reagan's former national security adviser. He
brought a key-shaped cake symbolizing the new relations he was opening with the "moderates."
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We know how that ended.
Three decades later, the mirage reappears in the form of Hassan Rouhani
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/rouhani-sworn-in-as-irans-president/2013/08/04/eb322736-
fd25-11e2-8294-0ee5075b840d_story.html> . Strange résumé for a moderate: 35 years of unswervingly loyal service to
the Islamic Republic as a close aide to Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei. Moreover, Rouhani was one of only six
presidential candidates chttp://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-06-13/world/39944179_1_iranians-presidential-
election-six-candidates> , another 678 having been disqualified by the regime
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/14/us-iran-election-idUSBRE95C1E120130614> as ideologically unsound.
That puts him in the 99th centile for fealty.
Rouhani is Khamenei's agent but, with a smile and style, he's now hailed as the face of Iranian moderation. Why?
Because Rouhani wants better relations with the West.
Well, what leader would not want relief from Western sanctions that have sunk Iran's economy