When I was a boy of around ten living in Tehran, my dad had a young student who was an interesting character to me. He devoured any book or magazine he could get his hands on and was always offering scattered general information on random topics, from the history of the croissant to how carburetors worked. Although the student was nearly in his 30s, he had no formal education, no professional skills and no job, just living from day to day at his parents’ house. As my dad despairingly referred to him one day: “Talented guy, but it’s a shame he’s wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle.” Hopefully that is not the case with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani. It is much more desirable for Rouhani to have only one skill, but one he is great at, unlike his two predecessors, who only managed to add to the long list of Iran’s unfinished and abandoned projects. And this skill might just be one of balancing between Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the United States, as we saw during Rouhani’s recent trip to New York. Rouhani’s second trip to New York to attend the UN General Assembly ended without any substantial progress in the comprehensive negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, a decade-old negotiation between Iran and the P5+1 countries, to which Rouhani refers as negotiations mainly with “kadkhoda” (Persian for “chief of the village”), as he has dubbed the United States on account of its dominance within the group. The trip, however, did offer some insight into what Rouhani’s strategy would be as the November 24th deadline for reaching a final nuclear deal draws near. While generally in favor of reaching an agreement on the nuclear program, Rouhani has refused to acknowledge any human rights violations in Iran. His firm defense of the Iranian judiciary, which was praised by the latter's head, Chief Justice Sadeq Larijani, was surprising to some of his supporters and criticized by the Islamic Republic’s pro-democracy opposition. But despite its unpopularity, this stance could be taken as a sign of Rouhani’s pragmatic approach and his firm commitment to resolving the Iranian nuclear issue. Resolving the nuclear crisis was in fact the cornerstone of his presidential campaign, and has been the highest priority in his administration from day one. As expected, most reporters questioning Rouhani in New York were concerned about the nuclear negotiations and the recent security issues in the Middle East. But unlike his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it was not Rouhani’s responses to the foreign policy questions that generated the most controversy, but rather his answers to a handful of questions about recent arrests in Iran. Rouhani either avoided the questions, or placed responsibility for these crackdowns on the nation’s judiciary and other non-elected officials—or in some cases outright defended them. In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, he denied that journalists such as Jason Rezaian had been persecuted because of their profession. Nor did he admit that 91 lashes and six months to a year in prison for participants in the Iranian version of Pharrel’s “Happy” music video was a disproportionately heavy punishment. Although these positions seem disappointing for freedom of expression in Iran, they could perhaps be justified by Rouhani’s strategy of mediating between the non-elected religious leadership of Iran and the West to solve the nuclear crisis. This is part and parcel of Rouhani’s understanding of the complex interplay of powers in Iran and how to retain their support in the fragile process of negotiations. This strategy is not specific to his New York trip, it has been visible over the past few months in his administration’s increasingly reconciliatory approach towards the religious conservative opposition. It is a sign of a true realist pragmatist approach to gaining internal support for solving the country's most substantial threat: sanctions. After the reformists’ lack of success in the 2009 elections, severe recession and intensified economic sanctions ratified by the UN Security Council turned the 2013 elections into a virtual referendum on the Iranian regime's nuclear negotiations strategy. Hence Rouhani’s victory sent a clear message to the regime: mend relations with the West, and avoid more hostility. It is important to point out that the Iranians didn't elect Rouhani only as the former chief nuclear negotiator to bargain with the West. Rather, they elected him to play the role of mediator between the two real power holders in this crisis: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the United States. As the trusted channel for communication between the two parties, Rouhani’s conservative position on Iran's human rights issues in New York becomes explicable.