RUTHFULLY YOURS

Ahead of his participation in the U.N. General Assembly this week, Iranian President Hasan Rouhani has launched what many have been calling a “charm offensive.” Though this term is inherently cynical, the reporters and pundits using it to describe Rouhani’s recent overtures to the United States — by way, among other things, of an op-ed in the Washington Post and interview with NBC News — are not.

This is in keeping with the overall attitude toward the new leader of the Islamic Republic. Indeed, all Rouhani had to do to persuade the West that he is a “moderate” was to refer to himself as such. His predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had been far less accommodating to the Middle East peace fantasists. His public vitriol, nuclear grandstanding and genocidal threats made it difficult for them to dismiss the danger posed by the mullah-led regime in Tehran. This was in spite of great attempts to give him the benefit of the doubt, not to mention access to a podium at Columbia University.

Ironically, had it not been for Ahmadinejad’s outspokenness about the death of the West in general and the elimination of Israel in particular, the U.S. might not have been able to enlist international cooperation in the campaign to impose economic sanctions on Iran.

Iranian Supreme Leader and presidential puppet master Ali Khamenei thus came to see Ahmadinejad as a serious liability to the country’s regional and global hegemony aspirations.

Enter Rouhani.

Never mind that he was loyalist of the Islamic revolution that ousted the shah in favor of the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. Never mind that his son committed suicide because he was “ashamed to live in an environment in which I am forced to lie to my friends every day and tell them that my father … loves the nation and to know that the reality is far from this.” Never mind that during his tenure as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, he violently quelled demonstrations at Tehran University, making students “disappear,” never to be seen again. Never mind that, in 2005, he described his success as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator by telling the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council: “While we were talking with the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in parts of the Isfahan facility … By creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work.”

No, none of this mattered when Rouhani won the presidential election in June. He was hailed across the world as a moderate. You know, a guy with whom there could be a real opportunity to “negotiate.”

Well, that bit is true. Rouhani, indeed, is happy to engage in negotiations. It’s what he does best, to drown out the noise of spinning centrifuges filled with enriched uranium. He brags about it in Farsi all the time.

His main goal for his big New York debut as Iran’s president this week, however, is public relations.

“I and my colleagues will take the opportunity to present the true face of Iran as a cultured and peace-loving nation,” he said on Monday. “On this trip, I will try to deliver the voice of the oppressed people of Iran to the world and we should say that sanctions are an illegal and unacceptable path.”

And there you have it. The only piece of the puzzle that didn’t seem to fit was Khamenei’s having referred to Rouhani’s outreach to the West — no matter how phony — as “historic flexibility.” The answer can be found in a report released by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) on Monday, according to which senior Iranian official Hashemi Rafsanjani is behind the whole maneuver.

Rafsanjani, who ran in the last Iranian presidential election, was disqualified by Khamenei for challenging his policies and leadership. Rafsanjani then backed Rouhani. Rouhani’s election was seen as a victory for Rafsanjani — who now pulls all the strings.

Since the election, Rafsanjani has been vocal in his warnings that Iran will collapse if it doesn’t undergo a major change. But, says the report, “Rafsanjani, who has status equal to that of Khamenei … and who personifies Iran’s Islamic Revolution, is not a man of dogma. His first objective… is to secure the continuation of the revolutionary regime, not to relinquish its goals. As far as Rafsanjani is concerned, moderation is a vital yet temporary tactic to save the regime so that it can continue to strive to achieve its goals in the future. He therefore uses the terms ‘Islamic realism’ the ‘Treaty of Hudaybiyyah’… and the necessity of ‘drinking the cup of poison.'”

It is with this in mind that Rouhani’s address to the General Assembly, dictated by “charm offensive” expert Rafsanjani, should be reviewed — and dismissed.

Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.'”