Can President Rouhani really be described as a ‘moderate’?

Mark Twain once said that if you give a man a reputation as an early-riser he can sleep in till noon. The same is true of calling someone ‘a moderate’. Call someone ‘a moderate’ and they can rant like a fascist any day of the week without reprimand.

President Rouhani of Iran has been called a moderate by most of the Western press and most of the Western governments. And so when he appeared at the UN this week and railed once again about the ‘Zionists’ controlling the U.S. Government including the U.S. Congress, it barely raises headlines. Surely a ‘moderate’ wouldn’t make such outlandish claims? And so the extremist statements of the ‘moderate’ are simply ignored. If anyone wants to see why things are going so badly on the international stage these days they should look to the people with the most benign monikers. They will find some of the explanations there.