Despite his frequent harsh and defiant rhetoric, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may be looking for a way out of Iran’s growing isolation — and finding a precedent for doing so in the history of Shi’ite Islam.

Recently, the Supreme Leader’s website has been stressing the importance of flexibility in dealing with the enemy in order to serve the greater good. Using the occasion of Imam Hassan's birthday on August 4, the website devoted a big chunk of its content to a peace forged by Imam Hassan, the second Shi’ite imam, with his rival Mo’awia in the early days of the Shi’ite sect.

For Shi’ite hardliners, Hassan is normally slighted and overshadowed by his brother, Imam Hossein, who chose to fight — and face martyrdom — rather than accept peace with the enemy. It is Hossein’s sacrifice at Karbala in the seventh century that is commemorated each year on Ashoura, the holiest day of the Shi’ite religious calendar.

However, there is no shortage of Shi’ite texts that praise Hassan. Khamenei’s rival, former president Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, complained last year about “discrimination” against Hassan. Rafsanjani, speaking to a group of clerics in the theological center of Qom, criticized the “wrong understanding” of those who “discriminate against Imam Hassan over Imam Hossein” and those who claim certain imams were naïve in dealing with the deceptions of their enemies. Rafsanjani also equated the value of Imam Hassan’s peace with that of Imam Hossein’s later uprising against oppression.