Today’s print edition of the International Herald Tribune—the New York Times-owned international paper—has an article by Michael Slackman on Hashemi Rafsanjani’s election as the new leader of Iran’s Assembly of Experts. Its title, in the print edition, runs “Moderate wins Iran election.” (In the online edition, the article has a different title, strangely.) It’s often a mistake to look for convoluted explanations where none may be found. Still, we’d like to know who decided that Rafsanjani is a “moderate,” and how they arrived at that decision. After all, it was Rafsanjani who said that

If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel, but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.

Is it this (rather peculiar) interpretation of nuclear deterrence that makes him a moderate?