With reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian elected as president, Iran may see a softening of its absolutist foreign policy and even opportunities for a new diplomatic opening, current and former officials and experts say.
Mr. Pezeshkian is a cardiologist, congressman and former health minister with little direct experience in foreign policy. But his promise to empower Iran’s most elite and globalist diplomats to pursue his diplomatic agenda has raised hopes of warming ties between Iran and the West.
Dennis B. Ross, a longtime Middle East negotiator who served as special assistant to President Barack Obama, said Pezeshkian “represents a more pragmatic approach, less externally and internally focused. confrontational attitude”.
Still, Ross noted that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “will vigorously limit” Pezeshkian’s international agenda.
Most of Iran’s president’s powers are limited to domestic matters. As the country’s top political and religious official, Mr Khamenei is responsible for making all major policy decisions, particularly on foreign affairs and Iran’s nuclear programme.
Another major force in the Iranian system is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which oversees all military affairs in Iran. The Revolutionary Guards have close ties with the supreme leader, who decide when and how to use military force, whether to unleash its proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen or to threaten Israel.
Diplomats and analysts say Iran’s foreign policy has become increasingly assertive in recent years, a trend that is likely to continue under Pezeshkian. That includes solidifying alliances with other authoritarian states — as Iran has armed Russia with drones and missiles to attack Ukraine — and portraying itself as a force to be reckoned with in the Middle East and the West despite its domestic turmoil and struggling economy. .
Ray Takih, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said: “Iran’s axis of resistance has been so successful that it’s hard to understand why anyone would try to undermine a policy that allows Tehran to project power with some degree of impunity.” As the election approaches, he wrote in his analysis.
Contact with the world
Analysts say the president’s greatest influence internationally is in shaping how policy toward Iran is viewed around the world, primarily through his choice of diplomats. In this regard, Mr Pezeshkian contrasts with his biggest challenger, the anti-Western ultraconservative Said Jalili, It is clear.
During Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s tenure as hardline president, Jalili categorically opposed a deal with world powers to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from crippling economic sanctions. Instead, he pushed to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, Stimson Center experts wrote in a June analysis.
“What he did led to Iran’s isolation,” said Ali Vaez, Iran director of the International Crisis Group. “He doesn’t believe in the value of dealing with the West.”
Under Pezeshkian, “I think the likelihood of a diplomatic breakthrough will increase,” he said.
Ease relations with the West
Pezeshkian said he was determined to develop a policy of international engagement and supported an easing of ties with the West to end sanctions. He said he wanted to increase communication with most other governments around the world, except Israel, but he also warned against placing too much emphasis on alliances with Russia and China. Watts said this was “so they can take advantage of Iran” and further isolate Iran globally.
“If we want to work under this policy, we have to get along well with everyone and have a good relationship with everyone based on dignity and interests,” Mr Pezeshkian said in May. “The more our diplomatic relations improve, the closer we come to the policy described above, but the more tensions rise, the further we move away from it and the situation worsens.”
Vaez said Pezeshkian did not make any specific foreign policy proposals and was quite candid about his lack of international experience. But his campaign’s top foreign policy adviser is former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who struck a nuclear deal with world powers in 2015. An English-speaking diplomat who had lived in the United States, he had been ridiculed.
Trump factor
A key test of Iran’s interest in diplomacy with the West will be whether it responds to efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, an issue that has been thrown into sharp relief by the candidacy of former President Donald J. Trump becomes more complex.
The deal, aimed at preventing Iran from building a nuclear bomb, technically expires next year. But the deal has all but expired since Trump withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018 and reimposed U.S. sanctions. That has prompted Iran to accelerate uranium enrichment, with experts saying it may now be able to produce fuel for three or more bombs in days or weeks.
Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and is prohibited from building or using nuclear weapons due to a fatwa (religious edict) issued by Mr Khamenei in 2003. U.S. officials say there is no evidence that efforts are underway to weaponize Iran’s near-bomb-grade uranium, but Israelis argue that such efforts are indeed taking place under the guise of university research.
British diplomat Catherine Ashton, who oversaw nuclear negotiations as EU foreign policy chief when the interim deal was struck in 2013, worked closely with Jalili and Zarif at the negotiating table. She said Jalili seemed most concerned about “keeping the negotiations going while ensuring that there was no real progress or results.”
Zarif, on the other hand, “has a deeper understanding of the United States and Europe and is determined to secure Iran’s future in the region,” Ashton said.
Khamenei warned Iranians not to elect a president who might be seen as too open to the West, especially the United States. Diplomats also note that transactional ties with Russia have warmed over the past decade after years of distrust and division, helping Iran cope with continued international isolation.
The Gaza war has heightened tensions between the United States and Iranian-backed forces in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, reducing the likelihood of a new deal between Washington and Tehran, Stimson Center experts wrote.
After an Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy compound in Syria in April killed several Iranian commanders, Tehran retaliated by firing hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, most of which were intercepted. This marks a serious escalation between the two enemies and is likely to lead Iran to secure a more effective deterrent.
Avoid conflict with the United States
Still, Iranians are aware that the United States is determined to avoid a wider conflict in the Middle East, a danger that has been underscored by secret messages between the two capitals.
A prisoner exchange between the two countries last year sparked hopes of further diplomatic cooperation, as did indirect talks over the nuclear program. But Iran’s focus now is on how — or whether — to deal with Trump if he wins re-election in November, as is widely believed among Iran’s political class.
Negotiator Ross said Iran’s new president would have some room to adjust the balance between “pragmatism or compliance with ideological norms set by the supreme leader” in making government decisions.
But Pezeshkian’s foreign policy, especially relations with the United States, can only go so far, where Khamenei has set clear boundaries. Ross said that even when it came to the 2015 nuclear deal, top leaders “distanced themselves from the deal and said ‘I told you so'” when Trump walked away from the deal.
