Iranian President-elect Hassan Rohani said that with his election his country had entered an era of cooperation and would take concrete steps to resolve its nuclear standoff with the West—promises that would require a shift by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
European Pressphoto Agency
Iranian President-Elect Hassan Rohani, in white turban, prays on Sunday at the shrine of late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Mr. Rohani, in first news conference since his landslide victory in Friday's election, called for Iranian relations with the U.S., which he referred to as an "old wound," to be healed.
The U.S. and allied European and Arab governments responded cautiously to Mr. Rohani's election and statements, saying it was too early to tell whether he could chart an independent policy from the hard-line approach championed by Mr. Khamenei over the past decade.
Although Mr. Rohani isn't a radical reformer, Iranian voters saw him as a break from eight years of conservatism and defiance by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Foreign policy and the economy, linked because of international sanctions over Iran's nuclear program, were top campaign issues.
President Barack Obama, after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Northern Ireland, said Monday that "we both expressed cautious optimism that with a new election there we may be able to move forward on a dialogue that allows us to resolve the problems with Iran's nuclear program."
The Islamic Republic's overarching policies on matters such as its nuclear program, relations with the U.S. and its support of Syria's regime are decided above the president's level. Mr. Khamenei and his close circle of advisers typically decide the direction of these policies, and the president executes them.
Mr. Khamenei has said over the past year that Iran would gain nothing by normalizing relations with the U.S.
Mr. Rohani, a 64-year-old cleric and lawyer, is viewed as a pragmatic and moderate politician who is trusted by Mr. Khamenei and his conservative circles as well as by Iran's reformist factions.
After serving on Mr. Khamenei's policy team for over two decades, Mr. Rohani has some influence with the supreme leader and is likely to have a freer hand than his predecessors to shape Iran's policies, many Iranian analysts said.
Conservative and hard-line factions that fought and blocked changes by President Mohamad Khatami, Iran's last reformist president, will likely be more accommodating to Mr. Rohani because of his close relationship to the supreme leader.
"Mr. Khamenei fully trusts him and once even said to him that he mentions him by name in his nightly prayers," said Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former member of Iran's nuclear negotiating team who served as Mr. Rohani's spokesman when he served as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator in 2003-05.
But Mr. Rohani's close relationship to Mr. Khamenei could prevent him from pursuing the overhauls that Iran's opposition seeks, and make him less likely to challenge the supreme leader.
During the campaign, Mr. Rohani said the U.S. was like the world's "village elder," to whom Iran should be talking; on Monday, in the live, televised news conference, he said "Iran is not seeking to increase or expand tensions with the U.S."
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