Published on The National Interest (http://nationalinterest.org)

Source URL (retrieved on Jul 1, 2013): http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/iran-south-the-border-8680

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Iran South of the Border

Paul R. Pillar [3]

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June 28, 2013

Those who endeavor to keep Iran demonized have had to work overtime lately. The imminent departure from office of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, the smarmy, Holocaust-questioning Iranian president, was bound to be a loss for the demonizers because he has been for the past eight years an outward face of the Islamic Republic that is easy to dislike. Their loss was made all the greater when the Iranian presidential election yielded a resounding victory for Hassan Rouhani, the most moderate and reasonable-sounding of the candidates. Since then we have seen in Israel and the United States a campaign, by those who would not welcome any agreement with Iran, to throw cold water on hopes and expectations stemming from the election result. That campaign has forged on, seemingly oblivious to (but in reality, perhaps quite conscious of) how U.S. obduracy in the wake of Rouhani's election would send all the wrong kinds of signals to Iran [4] about U.S. intentions. It is such signals, more so than anything having to do with Rouhani's views or political position, that would impede successful negotiation of a nuclear agreement with Tehran.
The throwing of water has been accompanied by digging up of dirt on Rouhani. One accusation that was seized upon was that Rouhani had been part of Iranian decision-making that had led to the bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association building in Buenos Aires in 1994. That incident got back in the news last month when an Argentine prosecutor issued a report [5] that talked about an Iranian presence in the Western Hemisphere that allegedly provides an infrastructure for terrorist attacks to be carried out either directly or by Iran's all Hezbollah. The dirt-diggers suffered a setback when the same prosecutor subsequently stated [6] that according to his findings, Rouhani was not part of any decision-making circle in Tehran connected to the 1994 bombing.