Hassan Rouhani

Some Lesser Known Facts About Hassan Rouhani

• Rouhani is a cleric. Hojatoleslam is his religious title, which is a middle rank in the religious hierarchy.

• In 1960, he started his religious studies at a seminary in Semnan province in Iran.

  

• During the Iranian Islamist movement, he started traveling throughout Iran making speeches against the government of the Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. During those years he was arrested many times and was banned from delivering public speeches.

  

• In 1977, under the threat of arrest, Rouhani left Iran and joins Ayatollah Khomeini in exile in France.

  

• In the Iranian Revolution in 1979, he tried his best to stabilize the nascent Islamic Republic and as a first step, he started with organizing the disorderly Iranian army and military bases.

• Between 1980 and 2000, after the overthrow of the Shah, Rouhani served five terms in the National Assembly.

• During 1983-88, Rouhani served as a member of the Supreme Defense Council.

• During the Iran-Iraq war, from 1985 to 1991, Rouhani was the Commander of the Iranian air defenses and from 1988 to 1989, he served as the Deputy Commander of Iran’s Armed Forces.

• After the Iran-Iraq war, Rouhani was offered a job in the Ministry of Intelligence in 1989. However, later he turned it down.

• From 1989 to 1997, Rouhani held the post of the National Security Adviser to the president. He again held the same post from 2000 to 2005.

• Over a period of two years, from 2003 to 2005, Rouhani was Iran’s top nuclear negotiator.

• On 3 August 2013, Rouhani became the 7th President of Iran; defeating his nearest rival Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. 

• On 27 September 2013, Rouhani held the conversation with former US President Barack Obama by telephone, the first direct conversation between leaders of Iran and the United States since 1979.

  

• On 28 September 2015, in his address to the General Assembly of the United Nations, Rouhani said,
  

  A new chapter has started in Iran’s relations with the world.”

  However, he also sais that America and Israel were partially responsible for the increase in global terrorism. He further said,

  If we did not have the US military invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the United States’ unwarranted support for the inhumane actions of the Zionist regime against the oppressed nation of Palestine, today the terrorists would not have an excuse for the justification of their crimes.”

• On 20 September 2017, in a reply to the US President Donald Trump‘s speech at the UN General Assembly; calling the nuclear deal with Iran an embarrassment to the United States, Rouhani called for an apology to the people of Iran for the “offensive” comments and “baseless” accusations, including Trump’s assertion that the “Iranian government masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy.”

• On 22 July 2018, while addressing diplomats in Tehran, Rouhani warned the United States that war with Iran would be-
  

  the mother of all wars.”

• After the killing of General Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Baghdad on the orders of President Donald Trump on 3 January 2020, Rouhani told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in an hour-long telephone call that America’s interests in the region were “in danger.” He said,
  

  The United States must know its interests and security in the region are in danger and that it cannot escape the consequences of this great crime.”