Hardliners rage over President Hassan Rouhani’s decisive win

London — Iranian hardliners indignant at President Hassan Rouhani’s re-election vowed on Sunday to press their conservative agenda, with some saying his campaign trail attacks on their candidate would bring a backlash. Rouhani won decisively with 57% of the vote on Friday, with promises of more engagement with the outside world, more economic opportunities for Iran’s youth, as well as social justice, individual freedoms and political tolerance. The president, known for decades as a conciliatory figure, remade himself on the campaign trail as a reformist political streetfighter, accusing hardliners of brutality and corruption in language that frequently strained at the boundaries of what is permitted in Iran. At one point, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called rhetoric in a TV debate "unworthy". In his victory speech, Rouhani continued to sound his defiant note, saying the nation had chosen "the path of interaction with the world, away from violence and extremism". DANCING IN ...

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