What to expect from Iran’s unused president?

Iran has elected a figurehead, President Massoud Pezeshkian, to fill the vacancy left by the death of Ebrahim Raisi in May. Following the first round of voting on 28 June, in which none of the four candidates met the 50% required to win outright, the election is moving to a second round. This gave the Iranian nation a clear choice between former centrist Pejeshkian, considered a political reformer, and radical Saeed Jalili. Pezeshkian won with 55% of the vote. He was chosen with the hope of implementing policies designed to strengthen Iran’s suffering economy through improving relations with the West, with a view to removing long-standing sanctions. However the truth is something else. In an effort to defuse tensions as a result of the cumulative protests in 2022, Pezeshkian will likely stock up on Iran to provide its direction on the subject of foreign family members, turning its reformist scene inward.

Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash sparked a wave of mourning in Iran and across the world. Under his leadership, Iran focused strongly toward the West and Eurasia, especially Russia. They were brought to power in the 2021 election, which saw the lowest level of participation in the history of the Islamic Republic (49%) and a record-high number of “protest votes”, where ballot papers were left blank. Today millions of Iranians mourned Raisi’s death, the truth being that many of them – especially young people – were fed up with conservative rule, seeing it as Iran’s isolation in the world and a lack of economic and social opportunities domestically. held responsible for the inadequacy of.

This dissatisfaction did not remain hidden in the first round of elections held to choose Raisi’s successor. Up to 40% of eligible citizens did not participate – a huge departure from 2021’s record-low turnout. In a population where voter participation is tied to the general goodwill of the system of government, the 2024 presidential election was shaping up to be a referendum on where Iran stood when it came to becoming the religious Islamic Republic.

In the second round on 5 July, 49% of eligible voters voted – still low by historical standards, but a significant increase over the first round. Greater participation helped put Pezeshkian ahead of Jalili while developing the confidence of increased expectations for both economic and social reforms.

Pivot to Eurasia continues

On the day of Raisi’s death, Iran was engaged in a decades-long standoff with the West that hinged on opposition to nuclear energy exploration, including uranium enrichment, even as Iran is a signatory to nuclear nonproliferation. Was also considered. Treaty (NPT), the same right of access to the nuclear fuel cycle as all alternative NPT persons was granted. Iran’s relations with the West have worsened due to tensions with the United States. The two countries had been at war for several years, following the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, the year the Islamic Republic was established. The hostilities persisted through a limited military war in the Gulf in the Middle East in the eighties and a proxy war in neighboring Iraq following the US-led invasion and invasion in 2003.

Inherent policy biases on all sides have prevented any significant efforts by either the US or Iran to improve the rights of family members. Even the 2015 Iran nuclear proposal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was more a stop-gap measure designed to avoid conflict than a full-fledged plan for entertainment. Europe did not fully negotiate economically with Iran as promised, and the US was unable and/or unwilling to classify the JCPOA as a treaty, instead decriminalizing it under President Barack Obama. Left as a working sequence. That was curiously rejected by his successor, Donald Trump, in 2018.

This led to a hard pivot eastward, which meant reimposing financial sanctions and creating alliances designed to safeguard Iran’s nationwide security. Iran’s position as the center of gravity of what has come to be known as the “axis of resistance” – a coalition of orders and non-state actors aligned against US and Israeli interests in the Middle East – has made it vulnerable to US and The ECU is at odds with policy makers. , Its strong support for the Palestinian cause and the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah has also had a negative impact on its relations with the West.

Contemporary manifestations of this eastward orientation come with Iran’s strategic choice to join the Shanghai Cooperation Group and the BRICS nations and to align itself with Russia economically and militarily. Today the Iranian nation is frustrated by the inadequacy of financial opportunity due to Western sanctions, measures adopted by the collective Iranian leadership – including the ultimate decision-maker in those matters, Ideal Leader Ali Khamenei – Iran’s political and financial generation as the leader of Eurasia. Towards and away from the west. Pezeshkian’s election will not adjust this trajectory.

home improvement

The death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a soft-spoken Iranian Kurdish woman who was wrongly arrested for wearing a hijab, sparked massive protests within Iran in September 2022, which were suppressed by security services. Raisi, speaking at a closed-door event at Unutilized York that year, described the protests as one of the most serious challenges to the Islamic Republic’s power and governance since the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. For a “war” waged through Western proxies to overthrow the Iranian theocracy.

Pezeshkian has currently spoken out against heavy-handed repression of public demonstrations, dating back to the so-called “Green Revolution” crackdown in 2008, and has promised to investigate Amini’s death. He has also promised to reform Iran’s domestic policies on restrictive dress codes for Iranian girls. Of mixed Azeri-Kurdish descent, Pezeshkian is easily equipped to deal with the ethnic tensions that exist within Iran these days. Their mandate to do so could be their biggest problem.

The decision by Iran’s controversial electoral “gatekeeper” the Parent Council to include Pezheshkian in the voting appears to be a call by the Great Leader to lend the Iranian nation with the opportunity to fulfill his desire for domestic political reform. The nation has responded – and now it is up to the President of Iran and the Islamic Republic to show whether they are jointly up to the call of duty.

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps Understanding Officer whose career spanning over 20 years included performing duties in the former Soviet Union, controlling contracts, serving on the staff team of US General Norman Schwarzkopf. During the Gulf War and again as a key guns inspector with the United Nations in Iraq from 1991–98. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.