The Iranian President weaves the carpet of his term with threads given to him by the Supreme Leader. The limits of his powers are very clear. The president is the senior elected staffer in the Supreme Leader's team. Hashemi Rafsanjani could not break the rules of the game despite his standing with the late leader of the revolution. Mohammad Khatami paid a price for his attempt to introduce threads that clearly did not carry the seal of the man with the last word. Ahmadinejad learned his lesson despite his attempt to bank on his popularity with the Revolutionary Guard. Mir Hossein Mousavi tried to borrow threads for his carpet from the people, and was subsequently barred from entry. Only the Supreme Leader has the final say in the affairs of the bomb, the role, and the relationship with the 'Great Satan,' and so presidential elections are only a competition within the same house and under the mantle of the Supreme Leader. The game of Iranian roles is very complex. Swimming among the reformists, hardliners, and moderates requires a great deal of caution. The same goes for well interpreting the sway of the clergy and its alignments, and of the generals of the Revolutionary Guard and their statements. Hassan Rohani is the legitimate son of the revolution and its regime. He was a partner in the early days of ember and a partner in the most prominent bodies and issues. In essence, he can say what Ahmadinejad was saying, but in a different way, coating the actual stance with a smile and without showing the victory sign. He can find less crude and provocative words, and for this reason, he was dubbed the ‘negotiator cleric.' Rohani made his way to the palace brandishing the word moderation. He chose a key as the symbol of his campaign. It was as though he wanted to suggest that there were many closed doors that Iran needed to open. Because democracy in Iran is simmered in local colors, many said that Rohani would not have won in the first round had it not been for the blessings of the Supreme Leader. Before heading to New York, Rohani launched a number of messages in more than one direction. The bottom line of these messages was that he was not Ahmadinejad, neither in the subject of the nuclear issue and the Holocaust, nor in the subject of international and regional relations. The era of Ahmadinejad was a time of conquest, moving pawns, and infiltrating the social fabric here and there. Rohani is talking about 'constructive engagement' and the banality of bloody conflicts, and offering Iran's mediation in the Syrian Crisis and dialogue and national reconciliation as the means to address crises. Rohani will steal the lights in New York. Journalists will chase after him, and diplomats and experts will put him under observation. They will pause for long at the vocabulary of his speech and his statements, and will make comparisons with the fiery speeches of his predecessor. They will see in him some of Rafsanjani and a bit of Khatami. They will speak of an open window, and the need to grasp his outstretched hand, or at least, test the current Iranian intentions. They will ask whether this moderation is the result of a strategic shift, or whether it is a trick of a boxer and a ploy to improve Iran's image. Skeptics will say that behind Khatami's smile and his calls for a dialogue of civilizations and cultures, Iran had continued its nuclear program and its program for seizing forward positions in the region. Experience says that the actual and main key is not Rohani, but the Supreme Leader. What matters is not what the former says, but what the latter wants. This prompts us to ask the big question: Have the Supreme Leader's calculations changed, or has he decided to modify his tactics? This prompts even more questions: Does the Supreme Leader believe it's time to make a deal with the dithering Barack Obama, like Vladimir Putin seems to have chosen to do? Does the Supreme Leader believe that saving the regional role is now more important than obtaining recognition of the legitimacy of high-level enrichment of uranium? Did the impact of sanctions on his country's economy force him to think seriously about a settlement to spare the regime later from what could be worse than the Green Revolution, which he had succeeded in suppressing? Does he believe that a settlement now would be better than a settlement later? Does he feel that the Sunni-Shiite conflict has drawn limits to the Iranian dash in the region? Can Iran truly move on from the logic of threatening the security of oil supplies and Israel to the logic of engaging in stability building in the region? What is the price that Iran wants or that it can get? What about the members of the Axis of Defiance, which are not living in the best of their days? Has the Iranian onslaught in the region surpassed Tehran's ability to afford it, portending for it a Soviet-like fate? Many countries in the world and the region will ask about Rohani's statements and the Supreme Leader's calculations. These questions heavily involve Bashar al-Assad, Nuri al-Maliki, and Hassan Nasrallah. No doubt, Rohani is gentle, attractive, and a good interlocutor, but the ultimate question is this: Has the Supreme Leader changed? If not, then the world will say: Rohani was here. He was nice but he was weak, just like Mohammad Khatami before him.
