In Iran, Rouhani Begins 2nd Term With Signs He’s Yielding to Hard-Liners
Now, as Iran prepares for his second inauguration on Saturday, some of the forces
that helped give Mr. Rouhani a 24 million-vote mandate in May are concerned he will not fulfill his promise of appointing women and young politicians to his 18-member cabinet, and instead is running nominations by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
But many of Mr. Rouhani’s leading supporters in the May election had hoped the new cabinet would represent a new generation of women, youths
and daring politicians, ready to implement Mr. Rouhani’s agenda and curb of the influence of hard-liners.
3, 2017
TEHRAN — President Hassan Rouhani, endorsed by Iran’s supreme leader on Thursday with a nationally televised cheek-kiss, is starting
his second term under newly intense pressure from both hard-line opponents and many of his own reform-minded supporters.
Mr. Rouhani has also had public fights with the Revolutionary Guards, whom he has called an alternative "government with guns." Many of those who campaigned for Mr. Rouhani this spring in sweaty stadiums
and posted pictures online of themselves in purple, his signature color, are now worried the president will choose pragmatism over promises.
The supreme leader himself blasted the president over his cultural policies, saying
that his government is too lenient toward what Mr. Khamenei calls "Westernization." Clerics blasted Mr. Rouhani’s signing of a multibillion-dollar deal with the French oil company Total, saying he should be investing in the nuclear program instead.
"Instead again they choose incapable officials, and again women do not get the chance to gain governing experience." The deeper involvement of Mr.
Khamenei in the cabinet picks comes amid resistance from hard-liners to nearly every move Mr. Rouhani has made since his re-election in May.
