Both before and after his election, President Rouhani has stated that his new government will regain the trust of Iran’s citizens at home, and rebuild Iran’s frayed relations abroad. He has called for domestic “reform,” by which he seems to mean the renewed inclusion of political leaders and groups that were previously excluded from politics and the provision of some basic civil rights to these groups. He has also argued that pursuing these domestic goals requires diminishing international conflicts that former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his hardline allies used to justify the repression of Iran’s Reformists. Thus, Rouhani and many of his allies seem to envision a more flexible foreign policy that would reduce international tensions sufficiently to enact these domestic reforms.