Skepticism Follows Re-elected Iranian President’s Pledge to Moderate

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani clinched re-election by a substantial margin Saturday on a platform of increased global engagement and more moderate policies.

Rouhani gathered 57 percent of the vote and crushed his nearest rival, Ebrahim Raisi, who received  38 percent of the vote in the four-man race that drew a voter turnout of 73 percent. Casting his victory as proof that his policies are resonating with the Iranian people, Rouhani won his re-election bid during a particularly strained period of international relations.

“So if Iran wants to be a normal country and wants others to treat it like a normal country, it has to act in accordance with international law.”

“This hope with which you’ve entrusted me, I do feel the weight of this responsibility,” Rouhani said in an address Saturday, according to CNN. “And I do pray to God to be a worthy carrier of your hopes and your dreams.”

The Iranian president’s re-election occurred as U.S. President Donald Trump was on the first leg of an overseas tour in Saudi Arabia — a chief regional adversary of Tehran. Saudi Arabia was incensed by former President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal agreement, signed with Rouhani in 2015.

The deal cut back on sanctions against Iran in exchange for Iran’s de-escalation of its nuclear program. Critics say the bargain did little to actually slow Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“This is an internal Iranian matter. Who they chose for their president is their business, as it should be,” Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir said during a joint press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Saturday. “From our perspective, we judge Iran by its actions, not by its words. The Iranians have in the past said some things and done something else.”

“They want to have better relations with us, but then they attack our embassies and assassinate our diplomats. They plant terrorist cells in my country and in countries allied to us. They supply militias that want to destabilize countries … with weapons,” al-Jubeir added. “They intervene and meddle in the affairs of Arab countries like Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. They support terrorism. They created the world’s foremost terrorist organization, Hezbollah. They provide comfort and support for al-Qaida with many of the al-Qaida leaders living in Iran for now more than 15 years. They have a relationship with the Taliban that destabilizes Afghanistan.”

Insisting that this “is not the behavior of good neighborliness, and this is not the behavior of a country that wants others to treat it with respect,” al-Jubeir said. It “is the behavior of a state sponsor of terrorism who deservedly is on the list of state sponsors of terrorism and who deservedly is sanctioned by the international community for this behavior.”

“So if Iran wants to be a normal country and wants others to treat it like a normal country, it has to act in accordance with international law and the values and the mores of the international system that have existed for centuries,” al-Jubeir concluded. “We welcome an Iran that’s open to the world. We welcome an Iran that lives at peace with its neighbors. We welcome an Iran that doesn’t interfere in the affairs of other countries. But this is not the Iran we see.”

The U.S. and Saudi Arabia dedicated themselves to “a new strategic partnership” and announced a nearly $110 billion arms deal Saturday, designed to boost the American economy and arm Saudi Arabia against counterterrorism and Iranian aggression.

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Rouhani will continue to face the hard-liners and extremists in the Iranian government that resist reforms and have balked at the scope of Rouhani’s moderate political promises. He will also continue to clash with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who hold a higher degree of absolute authority in the country while upholding an economic model of “resistance” that rejects Western influences.

“Rouhani upped the ante in the past 10 days in the rhetoric that he used. Clearly it’s going to be difficult to back down on some of this stuff,” Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies program at Stanford University, told Reuters.

“With more than 41 million of your votes, you have pulled out the history of our country away from inertia and doubt,” Rouhani said in his speech, The New York Times reported. “I will keep my promises.”

While insisting that Iran desires “to live in peace and friendship with the rest of the world,” Rouhani warned that the country is “not ready or willing to be threatened or be sanctioned.”

The re-election also occurred as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to attempt to persuade Trump to impose sweeping new sanctions on Iran for its missile and terrorist threats against Israel, a close adviser told Bloomberg Politics.

“Rouhani isn’t going to have a partner for these kinds of policies in Washington any longer,” Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Bloomberg. “In the zero-sum game of the Middle East, a better U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia and Israel will mean a more antagonistic relationship with Iran.”