I ran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was sworn into office last Tuesday. The next day, a targeted missile strike in Tehran killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was visiting the capital for the inauguration ceremonies. While no one has yet taken credit for the attack, it was widely reported to have been carried out by Mossad agents, and Iran has vowed vengeance against the State of Israel for Haniyeh’s death.
Pezeshkian wrote on X:
Iran is mourning the martyrdom of the brave leader of the Palestinian Resistance Ismail Haniyeh. Yesterday I raised his victorious hand and today I have to carry his coffin on my shoulders.
He continued, vowing vengeance against Israel:
The Islamic Republic of Iran will defend its territorial integrity and honor, and would make the terrorist occupiers regret their cowardly action.
Prior to his inauguration, several media outlets branded Pezeshkian a coolheaded moderate. They espoused hopes that he would scale back the Noor campaign — a brutal crackdown on Iranian women who violate the country’s strict morality laws — and reopen talks with the West over Iran’s nuclear program.
The New York Times said that Pezeshkian’s ascension was “raising hopes of a warmer relationship with the West.”
The European Council on Foreign Relations said that Pezeshkian might “be averse to further military conflict in the Middle East” and that his presidency presented an “opportunity to pursue principled diplomacy with Tehran.”
The Washington Post described Pezeshkian as a “a little-known reformist and cardiac surgeon” who “defeated his ultraconservative rival to become the next president of Iran” by “campaigning on more social freedoms and engagement with the West.”
These hopes overestimate Pezeshkian’s presidential power — and ascribe to him liberal values which he does not hold.
Although his rhetorical style has been one of unity and appeasement in the past, Pezeshkian is no ecumenicist. Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said “he still believes the Islamic Republic can be a city on the hill, but he’s also an actual believer, religious believer, and more importantly, he seems to believe what he says.” Taleblu argued that this allows the “security establishment to let a believer function as the human shield for what it is that they want to achieve, which is to buy time and space for the survival of the regime and the stabilization of the regime.”
Even the terms “president” and “election” are misleading. The office of “president” in Iran holds no real parallels to the same role in the United States.
“Using the word ‘election’ would be an insult to real elections,” Taleblu said. “For free individuals who do have control of their own political and social and economic destiny, elections are the manifestation of that freedom of choice. You don’t have freedom of choice in the Islamic Republic.” And as such, Iranian “elections” are “really selections.”
While it is true that Pezeshkian was “selected” by the people of Iran, the candidates listed on the ballot were all handpicked by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Those opposed to the clerical establishment called for election boycotts as a rejection of the country’s entire political system, and only 40 percent of Iranians turned out to vote.
Khamenei is Iran’s supreme leader in both name and practice. Under Iranian law, he must endorse the newly elected president. This endorsement is not ceremonial but a legal validation of the election results. He has the power to veto any “elected” candidate. The president of Iran is a figurehead for the regime, but Khamenei remains the ultimate decision-maker.
If the U.S. and its allies want to curtail Iran’s supremacy in the region — and put a damper on the Iranian nuclear program — they must provide support and resources to the great number of Iranians who regularly risk their lives to protest the regime.
The Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran, which followed the murder of Mahsa Amini in 2022, was a huge step forward for pro-freedom political action. Thousands took to the streets — at the risk of arrest, political imprisonment, or even execution — to protest the regime’s morality-policing and other tyrannies. As Taleblu said, “substantive change has not come by working through the system, . . . which is why the younger generation and other Iranians choose to boycott the ballot box altogether.”
Western powers must not kid themselves: Iran’s new president is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. His rhetoric and self-presentation — all the way down to his American-styled suits and haircut — are calculated to appeal to Western liberals, but he is merely a polished front man for a bloody regime. Gradual reform cannot be achieved under that regime. The West must stop pretending otherwise.