{"id":282454,"date":"2026-09-07T19:12:59","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T19:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/282454\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T19:12:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T19:12:59","slug":"irans-former-president-proposes-referendum-on-ending-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/282454\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s former president proposes referendum on ending war"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran’s former president has called for a referendum on whether to continue fighting the US.<\/p>\n

At the weekend, Hassan Rouhani<\/a> called for an end to the war if a ceasefire was in line with the will of the majority of the Iranian people.<\/p>\n

Addressing a gathering of former provincial governors, he said that the country’s aims should be put to the public.<\/p>\n

He said: “It is very important that the framework of our national goals is clear to ourselves first, and then we present it to the people.<\/p>\n

“We say to the people: our plan is to fight the world’s big powers for another 20 years. If the people say they accept it, very good, let’s continue. But if the people do not accept it and show us another way, do we not want to accept that?”<\/p>\n

While Mr Rouhani did not use the word “referendum”, political observers interpreted his comments as an appeal to hold a vote.<\/p>\n

\"Smoke<\/p>\n

A US-Israeli strike on Tehran in March. Hassan Rouhani said the war should end if it was the will of the majority – Atta Kenare\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Mr Rouhani called for the conflict to be ended “honourably” and in line with “the overwhelming majority of the people”, so that Iran could repair the damage it has suffered and give investors and young people a reason to hope.<\/p>\n

A small minority “who now hold the megaphones and are making noise”, he said, were not the majority of Iranian society<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He also criticised Iran’s state broadcasting, which is dominated by hardliners and military voices, and said a national broadcaster that became “a centre for division” would lose its audience “from the president down to ordinary people”.<\/p>\n

Mr Rouhani, who was Iran’s president from 2013 to 2021, was the architect of the 2015 nuclear deal that lifted sanctions in exchange for curbs on Tehran’s nuclear programme, and which was abandoned by the US under Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Rouhani’s ‘dangerous’ call for peace<\/p>\n

The “sheikh diplomat”, as he was once known, has long been a target for conservatives who never forgave him for the nuclear deal, and his latest comments are a rare challenge to the hardliners steering the war against Washington.<\/p>\n

The Fars news agency said his words were dangerous and should not be brushed aside, adding: “Rouhani does not speak out of ignorance. He knows what he is saying, and what line he is pursuing in the middle of a war.”<\/p>\n

Tasnim, another news source that is aligned with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)<\/a>, mocked the former “sheikh diplomat”, calling him the “sheikh of loss”.<\/p>\n

Mahmoud Nabavian, a politician who is close to hardliners within the government, spoke of a “fake” division between those who support war or peace, which he said was promoted by “cowardly comfort-seekers” whose real aim was “the surrender of great and powerful Iran”.<\/p>\n

Morteza Mahmoudi, a Tehran MP, called Mr Rouhani the “most hated president in the history of the revolution”.<\/p>\n

One speaker during a pro-Islamic Republic rally threatened that people would “knock his teeth out of his mouth”, if Mr Rouhani was seen on the street, adding that the former president “should be hanging from the gallows”.<\/p>\n

To Iran’s hardliners, Mr Rouhani embodies a world-view discredited by the war \u2013 that Iran’s security can be bought through negotiation and compromise with the West.<\/p>\n

That Mr Rouhani can say such things at all, and largely get away with it, shows both his diminished standing and the limits of the hardliners’ reach.<\/p>\n

Since the 2021 election that brought the late Ebrahim Raisi to power, hardliners aligned with the IRGC have controlled much of the state, pushing Mr Rouhani and his moderate allies to the margins.<\/p>\n

Stripped of formal power, he speaks now as an elder statesman rather than a player, which is part of the reason his interventions are tolerated.<\/p>\n

But as a two-term president and a cleric, Mr Rouhani retains a constituency among the millions of Iranians who voted for engagement with the West and an easing of confrontation \u2013 a bloc the Islamic Republic, its legitimacy already strained, can ill afford to turn on outright.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some in the hardline camp have blamed the diplomatic engagement championed by Mr Rouhani and his allies for creating the opening that led to the war and the killing of Ali Khamenei, the late supreme leader.<\/p>\n

Yet the language of ending the war has crept in from across the spectrum, and Mr Rouhani is not alone.<\/p>\n

Mohsen Hashemi, the son of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president, has also warned against prolonging the fighting.<\/p>\n

On Sunday night, Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of the supreme national security council, said Iran would soon declare a “prohibited zone” beyond the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

In his first state TV interview since he was appointed to the job last month, he dismissed Mr Trump’s claims that the strait was open and under US naval control as a “big lie”.<\/p>\n

He added that American forces were trying to slip five or six vessels through the waterway’s southern edge every day \u2013 ships that, he said, “usually get hit”.<\/p>\n

Mr Rezaei also claimed that two days earlier, Iran had tested a “special anti-destroyer” missile over a US warship for the first time.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the region, Saudi Aramco’s Jizan oil facilities were attacked on Monday, leaving Saudi officials to assess the damage after the company’s infrastructure had been hit.<\/p>\n

Try full access to The Telegraph free today. Unlock their award-winning website and essential news app, plus useful tools and expert guides for your money, health and holidays.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran’s former president has called for a referendum on whether to continue fighting the US. At the weekend,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[2332,34,76850,76849,6971],"class_list":["post-282454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-hassan-rouhani","tag-iran","tag-mr-rouhani","tag-rouhani","tag-s"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117231354388498140","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}