As talks over Iran’s nuclear crisis reach a critical phase not seen since negotiations began in 2005, Western media, Iran experts and politicians, more frequently and nearly unanimously, assert that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the foreign policy decision-maker in Iran. This view, however, does not reflect the entire picture.

In 2013, during his presidential campaign, Hassan Rouhani voiced a rather unusual and unprecedented argument. At a news conference, in response to a journalist, he said, “You say that the president and his government do not have any say in foreign policy and [only] the supreme leader does. But [the reality] is not like that.”

In his argument, Rouhani highlighted the differences between the foreign policies of different administrations as evidence that, while Ayatollah Khamenei holds authority over all three branches of the state, presidents and their administrations do influence foreign policy. In remarking that “the leader [Khamenei] has been the same,” he raised the question that if administrations are a non-factor, how can one explain the differing foreign policies from one president to the next?

During Hashemi Rafsanjani’s presidency (1989-1997), he made numerous gestures toward the United States — toward Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton — all the while Khamenei supported the doctrine of “the West minus the United States.”