There much ado lately about exactly how President Obama’s foreign-policy strategy in Syria — or total absence of one, ahem — is playing with dictators and nefarious regimes around the world about exactly how far Obama is willing to go to avoid military action. The lack of hardline follow-through on the “red line” that he set for Syria is probably making Iran wonder how far they can push their own personalized version of a “red line,” and not in a good way.

Iran’s new President Hassan Rouhani is here to explain, however, that Iran will never “seek weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, nor will we ever.” In fact, he claims, “we have never pursued or sought a nuclear bomb” and “we solely are looking for peaceful nuclear technology.” …True that he might be trying to strike a more placating tone than that of his predecessor Ahmadinejad, but I’ll do so hope we’ll be forgiven if we don’t just take his word for it.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told NBC News on Wednesday that the country will never develop nuclear weapons and that he has the clout to make a deal with the West on the disputed atomic program. …

“The problem won’t be from our side,” he said at the presidential compound in Tehran. “We have sufficient political latitude to solve this problem.”

Asked whether Iran would ever build a nuclear weapon, Rouhani noted that the country has repeatedly pledged that “under no circumstances would we seek any weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, nor will we ever.”

“We have never pursued or sought a nuclear bomb, and we are not going to do so,” he said. “We solely are looking for peaceful nuclear technology.”