Rouhani's Normalcy

Around a dozen political prisoners have been released in Iran:

The release resonates particularly strongly inside Iran, where it appeared to mark a first clear act of dismantling what analysts have called the “securitization” of the country: a process that gave increasing power to internal security forces, beginning with the 2005 election of arch-conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and deepening appreciably after his fraud-tainted 2009 reelection and its violent aftermath.

Mr. Rouhani has called his shocking mid-June victory over a slate of conservative candidates the “beginning of a new chapter,” with expectations that the “era of sorrow is coming to an end.” Thousands of Iranians thronged streets across the country to celebrate Rouhani’s win.

My take on this is that Rouhani is trying to take Iran past the conflict and crisis that surrounded the 2009 presidential election, and promote an Iranian version of normalcy in which the reformists are brought in from the cold under the banner of the Islamic republic, perhaps quietly finding ways to put the suppression of the Green Movement into a black box called the "Ahmadinejad years" and act as if it had nothing to do with the system in power.