How has Tehran repaid this special treatment? It has continued with the same foreign provocations, even intensifying them in many respects. (…) It is difficult to say how much of the courtship of supposed Iranian moderates by Western governments was justified by ignorance and how much was justified by deception. But it is clear that neither sort of justification can remain intact for much longer—not even through the U.N. General Assembly. The growing catalog of Iranian provocations suggests that the time has come for the international community to seriously challenge the so-called moderates who are not standing in the way of those dangerous activities.
But it also highlights the fact that the international community is long overdue for challenging the Rouhani administration on other matters too. (…) Today it should be clear that such moderation is not taking hold. There is no longer any serious argument to be made for holding back the shocking truths about the Rouhani administration’s human rights record both before and after Rouhani took office in 2013. There is no longer any reason to assume that Rouhani is substantively different from all the other figures who were active in the Iranian regime in its early days, and especially at the time of the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in the summer of 1988, primarily the activists of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran.“
(Giulio Maria Terzi : „The Dangerous Myth of Rouhani’s Bogus Moderation“)
