A moderate in the Iranian government is still an extremist, but there is hope Iran’s new president, who won in a surprise landslide, will be a little more agreeable than his predecessor.

Hasan Rowhani pledged to follow a “path of moderation and justice, not extremism,” vowing to be more open about the country’s nuclear program.

“We have to enhance mutual trust between Iran and other countries,” he said. “We have to build trust.”

After the foul rhetoric that emanated regularly from Iran’s previous president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which included calls for the destruction of Israel, Rowhani’s press conference on Monday was, if not a breath of fresh air, at least a whiff of something not too stale.

Though the president doesn’t have the authority to set major policies, because of the magnitude of his victory (more than 50 percent of the voters chose him with Tehran’s mayor a distant second with slightly less than 17 percent of the vote) and his connection to former President Akbar Rafsanjani, there is hope that his election might herald a new era of diplomacy.

Rowhani, a former nuclear negotiator, has criticized official government positions that have led to crippling economic sanctions imposed upon Iran by countries concerned about its nuclear program. But we must not forget that Rowhani was one of only a handful of candidates who were vetted by the Guardian Council; of the 680 people who registered for the election, only eight were allowed on to the ballot.

Writing for the Globe and Mail, Kaveh Shahrooz noted the election was not much more than “a charade,” and limited to those candidates “with intense fealty to the Supreme Leader and Revolutionary Guards …”

Talking with Iranians and reading their posts on social media, Shahrooz comes to the conclusion that they saw Rowhani as a choice between bad and worse.

“Yet they voted for the least distasteful candidate as a rebuke to an establishment that has oppressed them for three decades and has tried to communicate to them, in the wake of the fraudulent 2009 election, that the electorate’s preferences are meaningless,” wrote Shahrooz.

Despite what you might read or hear in Iranian media, he noted, the vote was not a sign of confidence in the regime.

“Iranians cast their ballots against (Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamanei and the theocracy.”

To know exactly what the Iranian people want, wrote Shahrooz, just look at the mass protests in 2009.

“They want democracy, human rights, an improved economy, and an end to their country’s international isolation.”

Whether Rowhani can facilitate that change, or even wants to see it, is doubtful, however.

“Neither Mr. Rowhani nor any other establishment figure will be able to deliver what Iranians seek within the confines of the Islamic Republic,” wrote Shahrooz. “But one can now hold out hope that the vote will deepen fractures among Iran’s powerbrokers, providing space for a genuine democracy movement to grow.”

Abbas Milani, director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University, told Time’s Karl Vick that those fractures might already be running through the establishment.

“They’re looking for a way out,” he said. “The economy is hurting too much.”

This could be good news for those of us weary of the drumbeat for another interminable war in the Middle East; especially after finally dragging ourselves out of Iraq and slowly doing the same in Afghanistan. The election of Rowhani might also forestall or prevent a pre-emptive attack by Israel on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Such an attack would be a disaster for the region, for Israel and for the United States. And, of course, for Iran and its people, who have already suffered enough under the thumb of the theocrats who have brutally ruled the country since 1979.

— The Brattleboro (Vt.) Reformer