Rowhani, Hassan

Rowhani, Hassan

(häsän` rōhänē`), 1948–, Iranian cleric and political leader, b. Sorkheh, studied Semnan and Qom seminaries, Tehran Univ. (law degree, 1972), Glasgow Caledonian Univ. (D.Phil., 1997). As a young cleric he was part of Ayatollah KhomeiniKhomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah
, 1900–1989, Iranian Shiite religious leader. Educated in Islam at home and in theological schools, in the 1950s he was designated ayatollah, a supreme religious leader, in the Iranian Shiite community.
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's entourage in France. After the Islamic Revolution (1979), he was elected (1980) to parliament, where he served until 2000. During the Iran-Iraq WarIran-Iraq War,
1980–88, protracted military conflict between Iran and Iraq. It officially began on Sept. 22, 1980, with an Iraqi land and air invasion of western Iran, although Iraqi spokespersons maintained that Iran had been engaging in artillery attacks on Iraqi towns
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 he served as commander of air defense and afterward was (1989–2005) secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, where he worked closely with Ayatollahs Khomeini and KhameneiKhamenei, Ali
(Mohammad Ali Hoseyn Khamenei) , 1939–, Iranian religious and political leader, b. Mashhad. A Shiite Islamic cleric who was the son of an ayatollah, Khamenei began his religious studies at a young age, and was briefly at Najaf, Iraq (1957), before he settled
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. He was (2003–5) Iran's chief nuclear negotiator when (2004) Iran agreed to voluntarily suspend uranium enrichment, a position reversed after Mahmoud AhmadinejadAhmadinejad, Mahmoud
, 1956–, Iranian politician. From a humble background, he supported the Islamic revolution (1979) while working toward his civil engineering doctorate and was a founder of the student union that occupied the U.S. embassy.
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 was elected president in 2005. Since 1999 he has represented Tehran prov. in the Assembly of Experts. Often characterized as a flexible pragmatist and circumspect realist who works well with differing political factions as well as with foreign officials, he ran for president in 2013 in a six-candidate race on a platform that rejected extremism and easily won election. In office he has improved relations with the West and sought to resolve issues surrounding Iran's nuclear program. He won reelection in a landslide in 2017. His surname is also transliterated as Rouhani and Ruhani.