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The wave of joy in Iran over the nuclear deal has receded, replaced by a sense that the hard part starts now. Having essentially frozen Iran's nuclear program for six months in exchange for a loosening of economic sanctions, the six world powers are pressing for a final, comprehensive agreement. But for President Hassan Rouhani, the tougher challenge may be on the domestic front, where he must now follow through on his campaign promises to introduce political and social reforms, including the release of political prisoners and allowing the press greater freedoms.

For the moment, Rouhani's plan to change Iran has the crucial backing of the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, who has given vocal support to the President's nuclear policy but has remained silent on the liberal domestic issues Rouhani has raised. But silence on the part of the Supreme Leader is generally viewed, in the complex Iranian political system, as tacit approval.

This gives the President political defense against hard-liners who would like to see the nuclear talks derailed and any liberalizing reforms stillborn. Khamenei's support, and the overwhelmingly positive reaction of ordinary Iranians to the Geneva agreement, means that Rouhani's honeymoon period with both the public and the ruling establishment has been extended by six months. He has the ability and — say those who know him well — the will to now focus on domestic reforms.

Never much liked by hard-line conservatives, Rouhani will in all likelihood try to marginalize them rather than compromise by showing, as he already has through social media, that his intended reforms have much stronger public support than the conservatives' retrograde ideological position.

Rouhani is commonly described as a conservative pragmatist, someone who will never endanger Iran's clerical and political order. But he has nevertheless come to realize that the Islamic Republic he helped build is perilously close to political, social and economic collapse. That doesn't mean, as some in the West surmise, that a year or so more of crippling sanctions will bring Iran to its knees, or that the people will overthrow the system in favor of a secular, liberal democracy: even now, there is simply no counter­revolutionary movement of any size in Iran. But many Iranians now feel that the promises of the Islamic revolution — justice, equality and dignity — were at best misleading. That is why they voted for Rouhani: they believe he can use his credentials as a revolutionary and a cleric to deliver reform from within the system.

As we in the outside world watch with hope, we must be judicious in how we support Rouhani. While it is tempting to believe we are on the cusp of an Iranian version of the glasnost, or openness, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced to the Soviet Union, we do no favors to Rouhani by comparing him to Gorbachev. That would be ammunition for the hard-liners who point out that Gorbachev's reforms led to the collapse of a political system, not its salvation.

Rouhani will try to avoid any such analogy. But while he will work with the conservatives on security issues for the sake of stability and expediency, nothing in his rhetoric or actions indicates that he will now shy away from spending the political capital he's earned in moving Iran on the path to genuine change.

The ink was barely dry on the nuclear agreement when Rouhani went on the offensive — on social media — to make a point about his domestic policy, celebrating the earlier reopening of the House of Cinema in Tehran (a cultural guild, closed by his hard-line predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad). "Hopefully," he tweeted, "other houses & locks can also be opened."

Rouhani must now push to open up hundreds of prison cells too. Some political prisoners have been released or furloughed since his election, but the pushback from conservatives in positions of power has been so far too strong for Rouhani to yet make good on his campaign pledge to see an Iran without prisoners of conscience. It remains to be seen whether he will be ultimately successful in bringing those prisoners — and the whole country — fully out of the dark. Iranians, many of whose lives are a daily struggle — economically, politically and socially — are counting on it.

Majd is the author of The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay

• Hooman Majd
• The Iranian President may find domestic reforms even harder to achieve than a nuclear deal