Changes and Nukes

Most of these posts have been about people who have failed to adequately respond to changes, but today, we'll be discussing a man who has managed to adapt to changes far better than the people before him. That person is the new President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani.

Iran, of course, is hardly a liberal, change-embracing state. Far from it. It is ruled by a very conservative Islamist theocracy, and it resists changes. Nonetheless, even by those standards, the previous President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was conservative. And his policies, predictably, were far from great for the country. Between denouncing Israel as illegitimate and the widespread election fraud, especially in 2009, President Ahmadinejad made many enemies and hurt his country's image. But nowhere was that more apparent than in his unyielding support of Iran's nuclear program.

The clash over Iran's nuclear program may be one of the most famous (or infamous) struggles that Western countries have faced in dealing with the Middle East. The Western powers say that Iran is building nukes, while the Iranians say that they want nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. After Iran began accelerating its nuclear program, the West began imposing crippling economic sanctions on Iran. Their supply of money essentially froze up, and the country's economy started falling.

And here's where the story of change (or rather, the lack thereof) comes in. By experience, most of us would probably know that it's very difficult to force people to change their behavior. That's just human nature, and it's what happened in the case of Mr. Ahmadinejad. He decided to stick to his guns and keep pressing forward. He continued to antagonize the Western nations, causing flare-ups such as the tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and continued support for the nuclear program. These sanctions were devastating the Iranian economy, but Mr. Ahmadinejad didn't seem to recognize how significantly the situation had changed against him, and he kept going. Even in the face of protests, attack from the Parliament, and the fact that he had to rig an election to win a second term, he kept on going.

However, when he got term-limited out this year, a new President took power. This was the moderate President Hassan Rouhani. Of course, compared to Mr. Ahmadinejad, most people would seem moderate, but this new President, to a great degree, has actually been more moderate, and one of his crucial recognitions thus far is that the current situation is unsustainable. And so, he recognized the change that had occurred, and unlike his predecessor, he took steps to change the course of the country. He stopped denouncing the Holocaust as false and started attempting to mend relationships with the Jewish community around the world through simple gestures, like wishing them all a happy Rosh Hashanah.

Most recently, and probably most significantly, he sat down in Geneva with the P5+1 and hammered out a deal regarding Iran's nuclear program that will, in the long run, hopefully help all countries involved. The deal calls for some sanctions to be eased while the Iranian state made some significant concessions regarding its nuclear program, concessions that they had not indicated considering under the previous administration. In other words, unlike President Ahmadinejad, President Rouhani recognized a change and reacted appropriately. And that has made the country look better, helped ease some of the sanctions, and, with luck, helped stabilize the situation for now and the future.