Hassan Rouhani, who has been the President of the Islamic Republic since August 3, 2013, two years after taking office, close to the 2016 Islamic Consultative Assembly elections, sharply criticized the Guardian Council for widely disqualifying candidates and said:
“Wasn’t the first parliament after the Islamic Revolution, which at that time Guardian Council didn’t exist[…], the best parliament in the history of this country?” […] The Guardian Council is an “eye” and cannot do the work of a “hand”. […] This is Supreme Leader and constitution’s opinion, is it possible for a party to say I’ve found a coloring pallet that can color there to whatever color I want?!”
Answer from archive:
– Yes, it is possible!
November 30, 1980, when Rouhani himself was a member of the “Best Assembly in History”, he had an interview with Jomhouri Eslami daily newspaper. The text of this interview is available in the archives of the Islamic Revolution Documentation Center. In this interview, he spoke about history too and the necessity of the Guardian Council. Yes, there was Guardian Council in 1980. For Rouhani, of course, in those days the Guardian Council was the interpreter of the constitution and the overseer of the “potential for dictatorship of the executive branch”:
“It has always been seen in history, in other revolutions, that if the executive branch is not controlled, it will reach dictatorship. We have seen it in the French Revolution, we have seen it in our own Constitutional Revolution. We have seen in many world revolutions that after the victory of the revolution, it was always the executive branch that turned that revolutionary society into an authoritarian one, and in order to prevent arbitrariness and tyranny, (Assembly of) Experts in this constitution, predicted that the constitution interpretation would be Guardian Council’s responsibility.”
– We saw that it happened.
On the evening of Tuesday, June 6, 2017, at an iftar dinner held at the expense of the government for Ali Larijani, the then Speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly and hundreds of members of the Assembly, Hassan Rouhani said as host: “Is it possible with a 4% growth achieve the goal of creating 955,000 jobs a year?”
Answer from archive:
– Yes, it is possible!
Two years after this Iftar dinner, Iran’s economic growth rate reached -7%. It came when Hassan Rouhani announced in a cabinet meeting on October 6, 2019:
“Fortunately, the employment situation has improved since last spring and summer; Our working population is now close to 25 million, and on the other hand, the number of unemployed has dropped below 3 million.”
– We saw that it happened.
July 29, 2020, Rouhani, referring to the emergency landing of the Mahan Air plane (flight IRM1152) at Beirut Airport, said:
“Is it possible in a free international space for a fighter to come so close to a passenger plane on a specific aviation route? This is exactly “aviation terrorism”. The person who sends a fighter next to a passenger plane, has committed aviation terrorism. Treat it as a terrorist.”
Answer from archive:
– Yes, it is possible!
The morning of Wednesday, January 8, 2020. 6:19 in the morning. A Ukrainian passenger airliner, flight number 752, left Imam Khomeini Airport for Kiev. 176 passengers never reached their destination. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeted the passenger plane in the skies of Tehran and shot it down with two missiles. One week later, it was Wednesday; Rouhani said in a cabinet meeting:
“One cannot believe that a passenger plane was targeted near the international airport. This is beyond anybody’s imagination. I say this as someone who has been in charge of air defense for seven years. Such a mistake was not made during the war, such a mistake has not happened in the history of Iran. There is no such thing as a plane being shot down near the international airport in the capital of the country. Nobody can believe it. Many in our society and officials were also shocked. Is it possible? It is sometimes hard to imagine.”
We saw that it happened.
Rouhani, the then head of the Expediency Council’s Strategic Research Center, did not tire of repeating “His Highness,” “Hashemi,” and “National Unity,” in every note, interview, and speech,… when he was getting ready to become the president. He defined the code phrase “Is it possible” from Khamenei’s words in Hashemi Rafsanjani’s storytelling style:
“If Mr. Hashemi is to the extent that some friends portrayed him, then why does the Supreme Leader sends a message that Mr. Hashemi must participate in the (Assembly of) Experts, the messenger was me (Rouhani). And he said, Is it possible to have (Assembly of) Experts without Hashemi, which is the verbatim of what the Supreme Leader said.”
Answer from archive:
– Yes, it is possible!
The Assembly of Experts has been without Hashemi since 18:20 on Sunday, January 2, 2017, when Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was swimming in the Kushk pool near Sadabad Palace.
We saw that it happened.
January 27, 2020, Hassan Rouhani once again used the “suspicion constraint” or or to express it by Kant’s words “condition of possibility”, “is it possible“, and about the uncertain fate of the FATF bills said:
“It is not possible for a law and regulations that the government has passed, sent as a bill to the parliament and the parliament, as the representative of the nation, has passed it, to remain undecided and damages our relations with the world?! Can such a thing happen and is it possible that Iran’s banking relations with the world be severed and disrupted?”
Answer from archive:
– Yes, it is possible, it is possible twice!
The Financial Action Task Force put Iran on its blacklist on Friday, February 21, 2020.
Reuters wrote, Iran was blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force after failing to comply with international norms on counterterrorism financing. The decision comes after more than three years of warnings from the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), during which the FATF sought to persuade Tehran to ratify terrorism financing conventions.
We saw that it happened.
The same day, at the same cabinet meeting that called the emergency landing of the Mahan Air at Beirut airport a terrorist act, Hassan Rouhani spoke of another “is it possible” that is now the keyword for “it has certainly happened.”
“Is it possible to endow God’s gifts (natural resources), desert, pasture, forest, mountain, sea and ocean?”
Answer from archive:
– Yes, it is possible!
In July 2020, the Supreme Court rejected the Department of Natural Resources and Watershed Management of Mazandaran Province complaint and decided to endow 5,600 hectares of forest lands in the Aghmashhad area, known as the White Forest. Thus, HojatulIslam Hossein Ali Khademi Aghmashhadi is a person who, by revoking the advertisement and identifying the nationalized forests of Aqmashhad, registers up to 5,600 hectares of virgin Hyrkani forest under his name as an endowment. The decision of the Supreme Court in this regard is a historical and legal document for the possibility of private ownership of nature and treasury.
We see that, it is possible!
Translation of this article by Sahar.