The 69-year-old cardiac surgeon has pledged to advertise a practical international coverage, ease tensions over now-stalled negotiations with main powers to revive a 2015 nuclear pac,t and enhance prospects for social liberalization and political pluralism
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Iran’s president-elect, low-profile average Masoud Pezeshkian, carries the hopes of hundreds of thousands of Iranians searching for much less restrictions on social freedoms and a extra pragmatic international coverage.
Pezeshkian, who defeated hardline Saeed Jalili in Friday’s second-round presidential vote, is somebody world powers are prone to welcome, hoping he would possibly pursue peaceable methods out of a tense standoff with Iran over its fast-advancing nuclear programme, analysts mentioned.
Pezeshkian managed to win with a constituency – whose core was believed to be the city center class and younger – that had been extensively disillusioned by years of safety crackdowns that stifled any public dissent from Islamist orthodoxy.
The 69-year-old cardiac surgeon has pledged to advertise a practical international coverage, ease tensions over now-stalled negotiations with main powers to revive a 2015 nuclear pact and enhance prospects for social liberalization and political pluralism.
Underneath Iran’s twin system of clerical and republican rule, the president can’t usher in any main coverage shift on Iran’s nuclear programme or help for militia teams throughout the Center East, since Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calls all of the pictures on high state issues.
Nevertheless, the president can affect the tone of Iran’s coverage and he will probably be intently concerned in deciding on the successor to Khamenei, now 85.
Pezeshkian is devoted to Iran’s theocratic rule with no intention of confronting the highly effective safety hawks and clerical rulers. In TV debates and interviews, he has promised to not contest Khamenei’s insurance policies.
“If I strive however fail to fulfil my marketing campaign guarantees, I’d say goodbye to political work and never proceed. There isn’t a level in losing our life and never having the ability to serve our pricey individuals,” Pezeshkian mentioned in a video message to voters.
Resurfaced from quiescence after years of political isolation, the reformist camp led by former President Mohammad Khatami endorsed Pezeshkian within the election after the demise of hardline President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in Could.
Pezeshkian’s views provide a distinction to these of Raisi, a Khamenei protege who tightened enforcement of a regulation curbing girls’s gown and took a troublesome stance in now-moribund negotiations with main powers to revive the nuclear deal.
In 2018, then-US president Donald Trump ditched the pact and reimposed sanctions on Iran. His transfer prompted Tehran to progressively violate the settlement’s nuclear limits.
Restricted energy
Pezeshkian has vowed to revive the flagging financial system, beset by mismanagement, state corruption, and US sanctions.
Because the powers of the elected president are circumscribed by these of Khamenei, many Iranians eager for political pluralism at residence and an finish to Iran’s isolation overseas doubt the nation’s ruling theocracy would let Pezeshkian make main modifications even when he tried.
“Pezeshkian would possibly be capable to deliver some social freedoms. However he will probably be a weak president as a result of Khamenei and his allies are way more highly effective than the president,” mentioned Sohrab Hosseini, a 45-year-old businessman in Iran’s Kish Island.
“I voted for him to forestall Jalili from successful.”
As a lawmaker since 2008, Pezeshkian, an Azeri who helps the rights of fellow ethnic minorities, has criticised the clerical institution’s suppression of political and social dissent.
In 2022, Pezeshkian demanded clarification from authorities in regards to the demise of Mahsa Amini, a girl who died in custody after she was arrested for allegedly violating a regulation limiting girls’s gown. Her demise sparked months of unrest throughout the nation.
“We are going to respect the hijab regulation, however there ought to by no means be any intrusive or inhumane behaviour towards girls,” Pezeshkian mentioned after casting his vote within the first spherical.
At a Tehran College assembly final month, responding to a query about college students imprisoned on expenses linked to 2022-23 unrest, Pezeshkian mentioned “political prisoners will not be inside my scope, and if I wish to do one thing, I’ve no authority.”
In the course of the Iran-Iraq warfare in Nineteen Eighties, Pezeshkian, a combatant and doctor, was tasked with the deployment of medical groups to the entrance traces.
He was well being minister from 2001 to 2005 in Khatami’s second time period.
Pezeshkian misplaced his spouse and one in every of his kids in a automotive accident in 1994. He raised his surviving two sons and a daughter alone, opting to by no means remarry. – Rappler.com
