A Moderate’s Tale

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A moderate candidate, Masoud Pezeshkian, 69, shockingly and decisively won the Iranian election earlier this month after his hardline conservative predecessor died in a helicopter crash in May. The cardiac surgeon’s victory over his conservative rivals, despite the purported wishes of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the orthodox cleric who really runs the country, has inspired young Iranians who want change, reported the BBC.

The question now is: Will they get it?

Amid the protests that engulfed Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 while in custody over a dress-code violation, Pezeshkian, a former health minister and lawmaker, said it was “unacceptable in the Islamic Republic to arrest a girl for her hijab and then hand over her dead body to her family,” the Associated Press wrote.

During a presidential debate, he criticized the country’s elites, including himself, for failing to control living costs, censorship and the treatment of women. Pezeshkian was allied with moderate officials who negotiated the 2015 agreement to shutter Iran’s nuclear weapons program, CNN reported. The US pulled out of the deal in 2018, however.

Whether Pezeshkian can end Iran’s political isolation from the West and solve the country’s economic woes is an open question, however, because of two political truths, the Washington Post noted. First, the Iranian president’s powers are limited compared with the supreme leader’s. Second, tensions in the Gaza Strip because of the war between Israel and Hamas also threaten to put Iran further at odds with the US and its allies.

Iran, for example, supports Hamas. Pezeshkian will almost certainly uphold that policy.

“The Islamic Republic has always supported the resistance of the people of the region against the illegitimate Zionist regime,” said Pezeshkian in a message to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed political party and militant group in Lebanon, according to Reuters. “I am certain that the resistance movements in the region will not allow this regime to continue its warmongering and criminal policies against the oppressed people of Palestine and other nations.”

American officials, meanwhile, don’t expect many other changes, added Voice of America. They think it unlikely that Pezeshkian would re-launch the nuclear talks, for example. Others are more optimistic, however.

Writing in World Politics Review, Abolghasem Bayyenat of the University of Oklahoma says that the recent past in Iran has shown that “a change in presidents in conjunction with other favorable conditions can contribute to foreign policy shifts.”

“He is expected to advocate for a more prudent and less confrontational foreign policy in tune with reformist politicians’ balanced conception of the ideological, economic and national security interests of the state,” he wrote.

One big reason for a change of heart in foreign policy might be the state of the Iranian economy, which is on a negative trajectory. Capital is flying out of the country. Few have confidence in local markets, businesses, and industries.

As a result, injecting optimism and growth into that mix will be hard for Pezeshkian because the economic situation is the result of an increasingly interfering government and the growing presence of military organizations in all economic sectors – and rising corruption that cripples business plans and economic interactions, wrote Ali Dadpay, an associate professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center and specialist on Iran, for the Stimson Center.

“Iranians are not impressed by Pezeshkian’s promise to lift sanctions,” he wrote. “They know that without curbing the influence of military organizations and security apparatuses, the economic situation stands little chance of improvement, even if sanctions are eased.”

He added: “To hope for a better future is a luxury many Iranians can ill afford.”