Masoud Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon and longtime lawmaker, won Iran’s Presidential election on July 6, 2024.
A spokesman for Iran’s Guardian Council announced in early July that former Iranian Health Minister Masoud Pezeshkian had won Iran’s 14th presidential election. The reformist politician, a former heart surgeon, was not well-known until this election. He unexpectedly defeated four formidable conservative candidates and a hard-liner, former Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in the second round of voting.
The election speaks to the changing mindset in Iran, where voters are eager to extricate themselves from the plight of Western sanctions. That said, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that Iran’s new president will shift gears and turn Iran’s anti-American foreign policy to one that looks West. Judging from the overall situation, he may not.
First, the conservatives in Iran remain a strong force, and the country’s supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps still wield absolute power when it comes to foreign policy and strategic decision-making. In the Iranian political system, the president is like the general manager of a company, who is mainly responsible for the management and day-to-day operation, while the supreme spiritual leader is the chairman of the board of directors and hence the final decision-maker of the company.
In addition, the Iranian president is a humbled military commander who has minimal control over the IRGC, while the supreme spiritual leader Ayatollah Khamenei has the final say over Iran’s foreign and nuclear policy and holds absolute power over the military, the right to declare war and the right to appoint high-ranking officials, including military commanders and the judiciary chief.
Since the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, Iran and the United States have been locked in confrontation, and every Iranian supreme leader since Khomeini has proved his mettle as an indomitable anti-American fighter. Before the second round of voting in this election, Khamenei said in a speech that “people who rely on the United States are not good at managing the country.” This statement not only aimed at the candidates but also at Iranian voters.
Pezeshkian himself is well aware of his shaky roots in Iranian political and military circles and stressed many times during the election campaign that “everything that does not comply with the Supreme Leader’s policy is a red line.” This was a way to show respect for the authority of Khamenei and clarify that he has no intention of challenging the existing political structure and system dominated by the conservatives.
Second, Pezeshkian is not likely to change the geopolitical situation, one in which Iran still plays a leading role in the so-called “axis of resistance” against Israel and the United States in the Middle East. The United States has always been scrupulous about Iran’s influence in the region, and hopes that it will refrain from extending its influence too far. But the dynamics within the axis of resistance involving Iran and Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iraqi militias and other regional armed forces is entirely shaped and controlled by the IRGC. The Iranian president has limited influence.
The conservative faction, the dominant force on the Iranian political scene, has little trust in the United States. The IRGC, whose senior generals fell victim to a series of targeted assassinations, regards the United States and Israel as its arch-foe and has no will to ease fraught relations with the United States at all. The U.S. and Israel also lack motivation to improve relations with Iran. Currently, the Israel-Palestine conflict has spilled over into Lebanon, and the Iranian government has thrown its weight behind Hezbollah to resist Israel. Before to the second round of voting in the Iranian general election on June 25, the United States also announced it would impose sanctions on 50 entities and individuals related to Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics and the IRGC.
Last, it is likely that Pezeshkian will roll out measures on the economic front, through strengthening economic markets, liberalization and opening-up, to improve relations with the West and attract investment and seek the removal of sanctions.
Pezeshkian, a technocrat-turned-politician, has a base of support drawn from the young generation and the reform-craving cohort, who desperately yearn for leadership that can steer the country out of economic hardship and improve people’s lives. In his election campaign, Pezeshkian set a growth target of 8 percent.
As there is inherent structural conflict between attracting Western investment and the anti-American bias in Iran’s foreign policy, the newly elected president is likely to continue to look East in the future, stepping up economic and trade cooperation with China, its largest trading partner. Also, there is much merit in accelerating the implementation of the 25-year plan for China-Iran comprehensive cooperation, which was signed in March 2021.
