The meetings, talks and negotiations with the new “moderate” Iranian president is continuing in Europe. President Obama and Secretary Kerry are insisting that the new moderate president of Iran will abide by the rules set by the Western powers of 5+1.  They are say he can be trusted to fight the hard-liners among the Islamic clerics in Iran and create conditions for better relations.

However, according to his background, history, and political attitude during the last 30 years, President Rohani is everything but moderate. A woman puts forward this argument from inside Iran:   

Unfortunately, it seems that Americans want to support Rouhani, and so the title of “moderate” is bestowed on him. In fact, he is far from being a new figure. We know him quite well, and his record shows that he is far from being a “moderate” who wants to make friends with America.

President Hassan Rohani has always been an anti-American hard-liner and extremely active in the Iranian hierarchy. He has been a leader in both final decision-making organizations, the Expediency Council since 1991, and the Assembly of Experts since 1999.

From 1989 to 2005, Rouhani was the Secretary General of the National Security Council of the Islamic regime. In fact, he is one of the founding members of the dreaded security and intelligence services, a brutal paramilitary force, established to crush all oppositions.

The campaign of 1991-1992 to assassinate over a hundred opposition leaders across Europe, including former Prime Minister Shapoor Bakhtiar, was carried out during his reign. The 1998, massacres of about 80 intellectuals,  known as the “chain murders,” during the presidency of the former “moderate” President Khatami took place under Mr. Rouhani’s charge of the National Security and intelligence Services.

He has been the secretary-general of the High Council on National Security who orchestrated the crushing of student revolts in 1999, killing, imprisoning, and torturing thousands of students, and ruthlessly suppressed the labor movement to establish independent trade union in 2001.

Given his very clear stance against the protesters during the 2009 post-fraudulent election uprising and the mass arrests, imprisonments, tortures and killings that ensued, it is a bitter pill for the citizens of Iran for the American government to give him the title of “moderate”.

Let us remind America that the “moderate” President Rohani’s vice president is one of the hostage takers of the American diplomats in 1979-80 and his minister of Defense is another hostage holder.

In a recent speech, Rohani demanded that agents of the national security intelligent services to be more aggressive with the people that he calls the enemies of the Islamic revolution.  During his seven months as president, there has been an execution spree around the country. Over 600 people, 28 of them women, have been executed.

They have rounded up and arrested scores of people. In addition, the so-called moderate President Rohani has ordered the arrests of a large number of activists of the independent trade unions. He has revoked the licenses of more than 20 publications and has arrested 14 magazine editors.

The hard-line stance of President Rohani has caused the United Nation’s special envoy Christophe  Haynes to warn Iran, saying; “It is deeply concerning that the government proceeds with executions for crimes that do not meet the threshold of the ‘most serious crimes’ as required by international law and when serious concerns remain about due-process rights,”.

On February 12, 2014, the UN Spokespersons for the High Commissioner on Human Rights Ravina Shamdasani and Navi Pillay reported; “…An escalation in executions, including of political prisoners and individuals belonging to ethnic minority groups, was notable in the second half of 2013. At least 500 people are known to have been executed in 2013, including 57 in public. According to some sources, the figure may be as high as 625… We are especially concerned about the reported execution in secret of Mr Hadi Rashedi and Mr Hashem Sha’bani Amouri. Their executions were reportedly carried out last month (January). The two men, were reportedly sentenced to death on ill-defined charges of… “enmity against God, corruption on earth and acts against national security”. They were allegedly denied access to a lawyer and their families for the first nine months of their detention, and reportedly subject to torture to force confessions…. We regret that the new Government has not changed its approach to the death penalty, and continue to impose capital punishment for a wide range of offences. We urge the Government to immediately halt executions and to institute a moratorium.”

As his background makes it quite clear, President Rohani is quite the opposite of a moderate, he is an extreme hard-line fundamentalist and radical Islamist. It is amazing that the U.S. and some European governments have decided to falsely present him as a moderate and a person who can act as a  stabilizing factor. This of course, is nothing but the continuation of a naïve foreign policy of Obama/Kerry duo and an economic and political coup for the other 4+1.