At 69, Masoud Pezeshkian is the oldest man ever to be elected president of Iran. During a long time as a member of Parliament and a cupboard minister, he’s had loads of time to hone his political survival expertise.
As a moderate in a system dominated by hardliners, he will want them.
Pezeshkian was elected president final Friday, beating his conservative opponent by a cushty margin, nevertheless it was hardly a ringing endorsement. Less than half of Iran’s eligible voters even bothered to come to the polls, and simply over 1 / 4 solid a poll for him.
Overall, expectations are low, and Pezeshkian’s ambitions seem modest.
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“Pezeshkian is an ethical reformist who will try to deliver on his election promises — to the extent that laws and regulations permit,” Hassan Mohammadi, a professor of social sciences on the University of Tehran, advised CBS News.
In different phrases, Pezeshkian has no grand imaginative and prescient to reshape Iran’s authoritarian theocracy, or to problem the supremacy of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation’s conservative Supreme Leader, though many Iranians lengthy for simply that.
What he is probably going to do, is try to soften a few of the regime’s harsher measures, corresponding to the principles on necessary head coverings for girls.
“The morality police, fines and other types of punishment must be put aside,” Pezeshkian stated on the marketing campaign path in June. “I don’t think that we are treating [women] justly.”
If he does roll again the latest crackdown imposing the mandatory wearing of headscarves, thousands and thousands of Iranian girls are seemingly to reply instantly by going out with out their hair lined — as they did in protest after the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in police custody.
Hardliners will inevitably push again, and that could be the primary actual take a look at of the new president’s energy.
In reality, Pezeshikian has apparently already had a style of what’s to come. Two days in the past, the president-elect had a pleasant telephone name with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Iran’s essential neighbor Turkey, which efficiently embraces each Islamic and secular life.
A distinguished Iranian academic posted on X that, after that telephone name, the Turkish Airlines workplace in Tehran was closed and sealed as a result of feminine Turkish workers inside weren’t carrying headscarves consistent with Iran’s guidelines.
During his marketing campaign, Pezeshkian additionally intimated that he would unencumber the web and make extra web sites accessible. At the second, it’s tightly restricted in Iran. Social media websites corresponding to TikTok, Facebook and X are formally banned, as is entry to U.S. and European information websites, together with CBS News.
Many younger, tech-savvy Iranians have develop into adept at getting across the restrictions, nevertheless it’s cumbersome, and when the regime slows down web speeds at politically delicate occasions, the entire system turns into unusable.
A nationwide survey lately discovered Iran’s web service is among the many worst on the earth.
Pezeshkian says he needs to make it higher.
“Filtering the internet has made the middle men and those who sell anti-filtering software richer,” he stated. “It is hurting users, and costing them a lot of money.”
This, too, will pit Pezeshkian towards conservative members of the institution who — with affordable trigger — concern freer entry to uncensored information and data could lead on to extra civil unrest.
Multiple waves of demonstrations and protests over the previous decade have posed severe challenges to the federal government.
On overseas coverage, Pezeshkian has intimated that a greater relationship with the West will lead to fewer sanctions, and assist Iran’s prosperity. On this level, Pezeshkian won’t solely have to battle hardliners who need stronger ties with Russia and China as an alternative, he can even be on the mercy of occasions overseas, particularly the U.S. presidential election this fall.
Former President Donald Trump, throughout his first tenure within the White House, took a tough line on Iran, unilaterally abandoning the worldwide nuclear deal his predecessor fought arduous to get Tehran to agree to.
On the packages and insurance policies which have triggered probably the most friction with the West, and which lie on the root of the sanctions — Iran’s missile program, processing of extremely enriched uranium, help for the Houthis in Yemen, and help for Hezbollah and Hamas amid the latter group’s war with Israel in Gaza — Pezeshkian has made it clear that he’s firmly on the regime’s aspect.
In a letter to Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, the new Iranian president wrote, referring to Israel, that “Iran has always supported the resistance [Hezbollah] against the illegitimate Zionist regime’s policies.”
That help, Pezeshkian assured, “is rooted in the guidelines of the Supreme Leader, and will continue.”
