How to react to Iran's new smiley-faced president, Hassan Rouhani?

Smile back, but don't stop squeezing Iran with sanctions.

Rouhani has offered a series of positive gestures since taking office in early August. He has released some political prisoners. He sent New Year's greetings to Jews in Iran and around the world. He took a phone call from the president of the United States.

Does any of this portend real change in Iran?

The case for skepticism is strong. None of the regime has changed in any way. Iran continues to make mischief through the region, most horrifically by supporting the brutal actions of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. As far as anyone can tell, Iran pursues nuclear weapons as determinedly as ever.

Rouhani himself is no liberal and no Democrat. An early supporter of the Ayatollah Khomeini, Rouhani held senior positions in the Iranian state during the regime's most vicious period of international terrorism, the early 1990s - the years in which Iranian-backed terrorists carried out assassinations in Berlin and Paris and carried out two terrible bombings of Jewish targets in Buenos Aires, killing 114 people and wounding nearly a thousand more.

As Iran's chief nuclear negotiator in the 2000s, Rouhani nimbly evaded international efforts to achieve a peaceful end to the country's drive for weapons of mass death.

More fundamentally, the president of Iran does not govern the country's national security system. The military and the secret police answer to the supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khameini, who has very emphatic geopolitical ideas of his own. Compared with all that, a cheerful tweet and a few words of condemnation of Nazi crimes don't seem much of an offset.

Answer this series of questions:

1. Who is the new ruler in Iran?
2. When did he officially start the job?
3. Where else has he had upper government jobs?
4. When was that?
5. Who was he working for in the 2000s?
6. For which country?
7. Did he agree with international efforts of that time?
8. What were they trying to stop Iran from getting?
9. Is he a democrat?
10. A liberal?
11. What has he let go as president?
12. What did he give Jews?
13. Where?
14. Did he talk to the U.S. President?
15. How?
16. Is Iran still after nuclear weapons?
17. Where is Bashar ruling?
18. Does Iran support him?
19. Who directs the secret police?
20. Does he direct the military as well?
1. Hassan Rouhani
2. early August
3. Iranian state
4. early 1990s
5. chief nuclear negotiator
6. Iran
7. no he evaded
8. weapons of mass death
9. no
10. no
11. political prisoners
12. New Year's greetings
13. in Iran and around the world
14. yes
15. ook a phone call from
16. yes
17. Syria
18. yes
19. Ayatollah Khamein
20. yes