# Hassan Rouhani Hassan Rouhani (born 1948) was the moderate-pragmatist president of Iran from 2013 to 2021, a veteran regime insider whose presidency rose and fell with a single defining gamble: nuclear diplomacy with the West. ## The Engagement Bet A cleric, lawyer, and longtime national-security official who had served as Iran's nuclear negotiator in the early 2000s, Rouhani won the 2013 election promising to break Iran's isolation and revive its economy through engagement. He delivered the [[JCPOA]] in 2015 — the landmark nuclear agreement negotiated with the [[Barack Obama]] administration and the other major powers, trading verified limits on enrichment for sanctions relief. For a brief period it appeared to vindicate the argument that Iran could secure its interests through diplomacy rather than confrontation. ## Collapse The bet unraveled when [[Donald Trump]] withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018 and imposed [[Maximum Pressure]]. The promised economic dividends evaporated, the currency collapsed, and Rouhani's credibility — and that of the moderate faction generally — was shattered. Hardliners who had warned against trusting Washington were vindicated in the eyes of the Iranian public and the Supreme Leader. The discrediting of engagement cleared the path for Rouhani's hardline successor, [[Ebrahim Raisi]]. ## Why It Matters For the vault, Rouhani represents the high-water mark and subsequent collapse of the diplomatic track — the most consequential test of whether the Iran question could be managed through negotiation. His failure was not primarily his own: it demonstrates how the destruction of the JCPOA empowered hardliners on both sides and narrowed the space for any outcome short of confrontation. The arc from Rouhani's 2015 triumph to the [[Iran War 2026]] is, in large part, the story of [[Maximum Pressure]] foreclosing the alternative he embodied. *See also: [[Iranian History Hub]], [[JCPOA]], [[Maximum Pressure]], [[Ebrahim Raisi]]*