Iran’s New President Is a ‘Reformist'; Will It Matter?

On July 5, a little-known “reformist” parliamentarian and medical doctor, Masoud Pezeshkian, was elected president of Iran. It was the second round of a snap election triggered by the death of his hardline predecessor, Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash on May 19. With him also died the miracle-working Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who managed to fuse an ultra-radical foreign policy with a Gulf Arab rapprochement and growing cooperation with Russia and China. Though some have been surprised by the identity of the new president, the election result fulfills the desire of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to install a figure less radical than the previous office holder.

In early June, Iran’s 12-member Council of the Guardians of the Constitution vetted and approved six candidates out of more than 80 hopefuls for the presidency, which is the country’s second-most-important official after the supreme leader. Historically, the Council mostly disqualified moderates, or so-called “reformists,” but also some “conservatives” that the supreme leader considered harmful to the regime’s popularity. In the 2021 presidential campaign, no reformists were allowed to run – a decision that discouraged the electorate. Only 49 percent of eligible voters showed up, compared to 85 percent in the 2009 presidential elections and around 73 percent in the 2013 and 2017 races.

Likewise, because the Council allowed very few reformists to run in Iran’s March 2024 parliamentary elections, only two-fifths of eligible voters participated. This was a record low, and it is likely that even this figure is inflated. Even more embarrassingly, only 8 percent of voters in the capital Tehran participated in the second round of parliamentary races.

There was no way that the Council and Supreme Leader Khamenei could ignore this signal of voter discontent. Iran is a dictatorship, but the regime takes pride in maintaining popular appeal and elections are an integral part of its self-proclaimed legitimacy. As a result, for this year’s presidential race, the authorities included a reformist among the eight approved candidates. The committee, however, made sure that this reformer would not win a first-round landslide, and so the Council excluded the most prominent and promising candidate. Rather than allow the formidable Ali Larijani, a conservative-turned-reformist and former parliament speaker, they approved the lesser-known Mr. Pezeshkian.

And yet, by allowing only one reformist and a few conservatives, the Council ensured that the reformist would attract all the opposition voters, while the conservative vote would be split. After receiving permission to run, Mr. Pezeshkian immediately pledged to introduce economic reforms, relax the hijab rules and give more leniency to public protests if elected. He also emphasized, however, the obvious: Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei will always have the final word in all matters.

On the conservative (or “hardline”) side, the most prominent candidate approved was Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. He has served as Iran’s parliament speaker since 2020, recently reelected on May 28. He is also a war hero who served as an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) brigade commander in the Iraq-Iran War, followed by stints as IRGC Air Force Commander and as police chief. In the latest race he represented the IRGC leadership mainstream, but with the implied backing of the supreme leader. In national security, like Mr. Khamenei, the IRGC wants to keep the confrontation with the United States and Israel well controlled.

The most prominent representative of the so-called “ultra-conservatives” or “ultra-radicals” was Saeed Jalili, an uncompromising former nuclear negotiator and head of the country’s top security council. He ran in the 2021 presidential election but withdrew in favor of Mr. Raisi. He is very close to the Paydari Front, Iran’s most radical political party, which came first in the March 2024 parliamentary elections. The IRGC are certainly radical, but they see Mr. Jalili and the Paydari Front as overly radical and dangerously irresponsible.

Only one of the registered candidates, Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, was a Hujjat al-Islam, a cleric/scholar one rank below ayatollah. This made him a safe choice for Mr. Khamenei, since according to the constitution, only an ayatollah can serve as supreme leader. He is a conservative, but not a prominent figure. He is also not a sayyid, one considered to be descended from the Prophet Muhammed, like the late Ruhollah Khomeini and Messrs. Khamenei and Raisi. The approval of Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi as candidate showed that Mr. Khamenei does not want the issue of the next president to be mixed with that of choosing his successor as supreme leader.

Indeed, the issue of Mr. Khamenei’s heir is on the minds of everyone in Iran. The supreme leader is 85 years old and purported to be in poor health. For a few years, rumors have swirled regarding his successor, with the late President Raisi mentioned as the most likely candidate. Now that he is dead, Mr. Khamenei is thought to prefer his own son Mujtaba to replace him. The late Ayatollah Khomeini objected in his days to hereditary succession, but the decisions of a living ayatollah always trump those of a deceased one.

All this delicate engineering, though, is not foolproof. Once the Iranian public takes to the polls, there have often been surprises. His great influence notwithstanding, even the supreme leader could not guarantee the election of the man he wanted, as when Mohammad Khatami defeated Akbar Nategh-Nuri in 1997, the Ayatollah’s favorite. Similarly, in 2017, Hassan Rouhani defeated the chosen man, Mr. Raisi.

In 2021, Mr. Khamenei and the Council learned their lesson and resolved that candidates unacceptable to them would be disqualified in an earlier phase of subsequent elections. This time, then, the supreme leader and the Council took a risk by approving both a reformist and an ultra-radical – but their bet on Mr. Ghalibaf still seemed a safe one.

Ultimately, this bet failed. But Iran’s leadership was nevertheless ready to accept a reformist, because it did offer a few advantages.

Iran’s president is less powerful than many think, not only because all major decisions must be approved by the supreme leader, but the president’s authority is also limited by key institutions and the parliament. The IRGC, the national army and the top judicial authorities are the exclusive domain of the supreme leader.

Still, as the second-most-important decision-maker, the president has authority over much of social and economic life in Iran, not to mention domestic security. President Raisi managed to increase his clout by creating an effective alliance with some senior IRGC officers, the foreign minister (who died with him in the helicopter crash) and the Paydari Front. This loose coalition represented an ultra-conservative or ultra-radical faction.

There are indications that Mr. Khamenei was concerned that this alliance pushed him too far, both on the domestic and military policies. It seems that the supreme leader sought to engineer an electoral process that would replace the deceased ultra-radical president with someone who would support him when he reverts to his previous, more pragmatic approach. His first choice in General Ghalibaf, however, failed, and he was left with either the ultra-radical Jalili or the reformist Pezeshkian. Given these alternatives, there is little doubt that, however reluctantly, Mr. Khamenei preferred the supposed reformist. His close circle made it clear that Mr. Jalili and the Paydari Front are too dangerous.

Beyond attracting voters to show up, this dynamic explains why a reformist was allowed to run, and why the formidable conservative (but not ultra-hardliner) Mr. Ghalibaf was encouraged to present his candidacy, even while serving in the highly influential position of parliament speaker. While Mr. Khamenei is anything but a moderate, the last general parliamentary elections in March pressed him to act more adroitly than before.

The Paydari Front, together with the ultra-radical president and some IRGC commanders, exerted significant political pressure for tougher domestic and foreign policies. The result was that in domestic affairs, the regime tightened its noose over security and religious affairs – epitomized by enforcing the mandatory hijab more strictly than ever, which led to nationwide protests after the death in police custody of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.

Mr. Raisi pushed hard for a very harsh repression of the protests, and until the day he died insisted on keeping an extremely tight leash on any demonstrations. Mr. Khamenei wanted a less extreme president, who will allow for some religious relaxation. He implied this during the mass demonstrations following Mahsa Amini’s murder, when he suggested a more lenient approach to wearing the hijab. This was about more than the religious garment: it meant greater tolerance toward protests more broadly.

In 2024, Iran’s regional security policy was radicalized, as its posture toward Israel and the West became more aggressive. To start with, the Yemeni Houthis escalated their attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Beginning in May, both the Houthis and Iraqi pro-Iranian Shia militias started boasting of attacks not only against the southern Israeli port of Eilat but also attempts to reach the northern city of Haifa and targets in the Mediterranean. Claims of the latter have not been confirmed, but their declared goal of strangulating Israel’s economy was made clear.

On June 13, while still carefully refraining from bombarding major cities like Haifa or Tel Aviv, Hezbollah began escalating attacks on Israel in response to the targeted assassination of senior commander Sami Talib Abdallah. The Iran-backed terror group began targeting locations further from the Lebanon-Israel border, while expanding the number of rockets and drones launched and including more nonmilitary targets.

Most importantly, in response to Israel’s April 1 assassination of an IRGC general at Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Iran attacked Israel directly for the first time ever. The April 13 assault launched some three hundred ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones. Meant to deter Israel from similar acts, Iran’s attack was launched under the combined influence of the very radical president, the ultra-radical parliament and an activist IRGC leadership.

Mr. Khamenei gave his consent, to be sure, but it is likely that with a different president and parliament his decision would have been more restrained. This attack was thwarted due to advanced warnings and American, Jordanian, Emirati and Saudi cooperation in protecting Israel. Still, this Iranian escalation was unexpected. It represented a quantum leap of Iranian risk-taking – challenging not only Israel, but also U.S. President Joe Biden, who had explicitly warned Iran against joining the fray of the Gaza war.

Moreover, in its domestic propaganda Tehran took tremendous pride in this attack and threatened Israel with much more to come. IRGC chief General Hossein Salami declared that Iran had adopted a “new equation": From now on, should Israel attack Iran or Iranian targets abroad, Tehran would launch direct attacks targeting Israel from Iranian territory. Israel’s response to the attack was symbolic, destroying a radar system protecting a central Iranian nuclear site. It was designed to deter Tehran by demonstrating that their most highly protected targets are exposed.

Iran’s deterrence failed; on June 3, an Israeli airstrike killed IRGC Quds Force General Said Abyar in Aleppo, Syria. While the IRGC continued to threaten Israel with retaliation – promoting a strong image for Iranians, Israelis and Americans alike – its leaders will be happy for Iran’s new president and the supreme leader to restrain them. Had President Raisi still been alive, he would have pu

The Iranian ruling elite is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. But they are not in a hurry. They believe that Israel is a nuclear power, and that it will use this capability if it is attacked with nuclear arms or if its regular forces are defeated and the state’s existence is put at risk. They believe, therefore, that Israel must die not in a bang, but with a whimper. In their view, the present situation – in which Iranian proxies are attacking Israel, the West is forsaking it, the port of Eilat is paralyzed and the Saudi-Israeli normalization process is fading, all with no direct Iranian involvement – is the best way to bleed Israel dry. The new president will most likely support Mr. Khamenei’s decision to keep Iran out of an all-out conflict even if Israel continues to assassinate Iranian commanders in Syria and Lebanon.

This summer, Tehran is facing a bigger dilemma. The mutual escalation between Israel and Iran’s proxy Hezbollah is again threatening to turn into an all-out war, although revived talks for a ceasefire agreement in Gaza leave open the prospect of a return to quiet. Except for very extensive damage to both sides, the consequences of such a war cannot be certain, and could end with the destruction of Hezbollah.

Tehran is ready to sacrifice Hamas, even the Houthis, if unhappily – but not Hezbollah. The Lebanon-based militia is Ayatollah Khomeini’s legacy, and Beirut is not Sanaa or Gaza. No Iranian leader could survive such a blow, and the IRGC (Mr. Khomeini’s creation, too) cannot allow it. The support of Iran’s new president will help Mr. Khamenei to stay out of the fray as well as to instruct Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to exercise caution. If and when Israel and Hamas reach an agreement on a ceasefire and a return of the hostages, Tehran will also have to accept a ceasefirebetween Israel and Hezbollah, however begrudgingly. Furthermore, if the alternative will be total war, Tehran may even have to approve a Hezbollah retreat of 10-15 kilometers from the Israeli border. This will be in partial fulfilment of the 2006 United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which stipulated that the militia disarm and withdraw from southern Lebanon. In such a case, Iran’s new president will not be an obstacle.

The late President Raisi, a few generals of the Revolutionary Guard, the late foreign minister and the Paydari Front all objected to the latest American conditions for rejoining the 2015 nuclear agreement. Raisi even suggested that the American embargo would energize Iran to improve its economy. Under these hardliners’ influence, Iran substantially increased its quantity of 60-percent-enriched uranium. By early May it had at least 142 kilograms, which when further enriched to 90 percent could suffice for three nuclear warheads.

As the International Agency for Atomic Energy pointed out, no country has ever enriched uranium to that level unless it was pursuing a nuclear arsenal. During the electoral campaign, Masoud Pezeshkian implied support for a nuclear agreement to help the economy and appears ready to adopt a more pragmatic negotiating position. Until now, the supreme leader supported the more radical elements. But public support for a pragmatic president will make it increasingly difficult to reject the American proposals. Even under President Raisi and his foreign minister, Iran resumed diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and was conducting quiet negotiations on the nuclear agreement with the U.S. in Oman.

Finally, on the economy, the late President Raisi promised a recovery, but during his two years in office, he did little to lower unemployment, reduce inflation or boost incomes. The jobless rate was 8.9 percent in the first quarter of 2021 and 8.6 percent in the first quarter of 2024, while youth unemployment remained very high. Inflation was highly elevated at 40 percent in 2021 and at 45.7 percent in 2022, declining only slightly to 41.5 percent in 2023. Gross domestic product per capita improved, but only marginally so, from $4,084 in 2021 to $4,500 in 2023 – still less than half the global average. All of this fell substantially short of Raisi’s promises.

Iran’s economy is stalled, and President Pezeshkian is tasked with removing some of its shackles. An even bigger challenge is corruption. Most likely the new president will be unable to meaningfully reduce the country’s rampant, long-standing scourge. In 2023 Iran ranked 149th in the Corruption Perceptions Index, below Turkey (at 115), Egypt (108), Jordan (63), Saudi Arabia (53), Qatar (40) and Israel (33). This is partly due to clerical and IRGC institutions owning an extremely large share of the national economy. No president, nor even the supreme leader, can change this.

Reducing the defense budget is another way of helping the economy. The huge share of defense in the national budget, partly due to the support for Syria, Hezbollah and the Houthis, is a crushing burden. Iran is not actually under any meaningful security threat, but the leadership in Tehran nevertheless believes that it is, and leaders are set in the quest to expand the country’s strategic reach. On top of this sense of extreme vulnerability, Tehran is also committed to achieving Ayatollah Khomeini’s vision of exporting the Islamic Revolution and the Shia creed to the entire Islamic world. There is nothing the new president can do about this. The only way to improve the economy quickly without any deep structural reforms would be re-entering the nuclear agreement to facilitate an end of the U.S. embargo. In this context, Mr. Pezeshkian will be happy to provide Mr. Khamenei a ladder to climb down, if he wants one. And if all else fails, the supreme leader can always blame it on the president.

By allowing the election of a reformist president, the regime did not change its radical nature. The decision to allow, if reluctantly, the election of a reformist was made because it offered the regime a few advantages. More voters came forth, meaning more ostensible public support for the regime.

Since the election, the regime also appears more moderate when viewed from abroad, its unrelenting radicalism notwithstanding. If Mr. Khamenei decides to somewhat relax the state’s domestic security coercion, the new president will be supportive. A reformist president will not join hands with the Paydari Front nor try to push the IRGC toward dangerous adventures against Israel and the U.S.

Mr. Pezeshkian is also certain to support Mr. Khamenei if he decides to allow a withdrawal of Hezbollah from the Israeli frontier. Tehran assumes such a move will make little difference, because soon afterward Hezbollah will return back to the border, as happened after the 2006 war. Finally, if Supreme Leader Khamenei, the IRGC and a few other relevant state institutions decide to settle the nuclear dispute with the U.S., thus boosting the economy, the path will now be clearer.