HAVING the moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani win the presidential election in Iran, one could assume that the Shi'ite state would start an extraordinary political transformation. After eight years of rule by the ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian voters settled the competition between the reformists and the conservatives by choosing Rouhani who managed to gain more than 50 per cent of the votes, securing him a sound victory without the need for a run-off. Some analysts attribute Rouhani's victory to the withdrawal of his only competitor, Mohamed Reza Aref of the reformists, which positioned Rouhani to unify the reformist's front in face of the divided conservatives. However, Rouhani's success in the race is attributed by some observers to a strong public desire for change and an end to the economic crisis and international isolation that Iran has suffered under Ahmadinejad's rule. It is true that the foreign relations and nuclear institution's files are in the hands of the Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; yet some local and foreign circles believe that having Rouhani in the presidential institution would ease much of the tension between Tehran and the Western world and even promote good relations between Iran and its Arab neighbours, especially the Arab Gulf states. President-elect Hassan Rouhani was in charge of the nuclear negotiations during Khatami's presidency between 1989-2005, during which Iran froze its nuclear programme and promoted dialogue with the West. Hopefully, the reach of a reformist to rule in Tehran would also ease tensions in the Middle East that escalated the threat level of a possible violent sectarian eruption because of Hizbollah's interference in the Syrian conflict. Hizbollah, the Shi'ite party of Lebanon that enjoys Tehran's support, sent its militias to fight on Bashar el-Assad's side against Syrian revolutionaries, a development that made some Sunni regimes in the region call for supporting the revolutionary army against the Alawite Shi'ite front. Rouhani's propagations witnessed wide calls for concentrating on the domestic affairs rather than dealing with disputes in the region. So, will the moderate reformist president introduce a new Iranian strategy based on respecting the sovereignty of other states and suspending traditional attempts to spread the Shi'ite sect in Arab Sunni states?
