“I swear, on my honor, not to forsake you in the hard journey ahead of us. Do not forsake me,” Iran’s president-elect, Masoud Pezeshkian, appealed to the Iranian public on X, formerly known as Twitter, following his surprise victory in the July 5 presidential election. Pezeshkian’s message, far from triumphant, reflects his awareness of the challenges facing him as president: a political system in which half of the electorate boycotted the election; an economy weakened by sanctions, mismanagement, and corruption; and the risk of the Gaza war expanding into a regional war entangling Iran, coupled with uncertainty about the outcome of the upcoming U.S. presidential election and its implications for the regime in Tehran.
During his campaign and presidential debates, Pezeshkian – a former heart surgeon – diagnosed some of the maladies of Iran’s political system, economy, and foreign policy. His prescribed cures, however, were abstract aspirations without detailed policy initiatives: a regime more representative of the political, ethnic, and religious diversities of Iranian society; economic justice through growth and a more equal distribution of wealth; and a balanced foreign policy bringing about a negotiated solution to the crisis over Iran’s nuclear program that secures sanctions relief and protects Iran from war.
Pezeshkian has a popular mandate to pursue these policy objectives, but he is likely to face opposition at home and abroad. These dynamics raise important questions about the president-elect and his prospects in office. How did Pezeshkian, against all odds, manage to prevail in the presidential election, and how likely is he to deliver on his election promises, both domestic and foreign?
How Pezeshkian Won
In the first round of the election on June 28, voter turnout was around 40%, the lowest in the Islamic Republic’s history. Pezeshkian received around 43% of the vote, followed by Saeed Jalili, likely Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s favorite, who managed to get 39%, and Mohammad-Bagher Qalibaf, the favorite of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who came third with a disappointing 14% of the vote. The eloquent former foreign espionage chief Mostafa Pourmohammadi received less than 1% of the vote, significantly lower than the approximately 4% of votes that were blank or invalid.
As top scorers Pezeshkian and Jalili advanced to the second round of voting held July 5, Pezeshkian’s prospects appeared dire: Qalibaf endorsed Jalili, and the path was seemingly paved for Khamenei’s favorite. Nevertheless, Pezeshkian and his political backers managed to significantly increase the voter turnout to 50%, which ensured Pezeshkian’s victory with around 54% of the votes, against the around 44% Jalili received and the 2% of ballots that were deemed invalid.
Several factors aided Pezeshkian in increasing voter turnout in the second round. He was endorsed by former Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani. He also benefited from the effective campaigning activities of former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, which included a good degree of fear mongering concerning the prospects for further international isolation if Jalili was elected. But most important, Pezeshkian managed to increase voter turnout and prevail due to his political message of equality and his seeming fundamental decency, which came across during the televised debates.
With a Kurdish mother and an Azeri father, and speaking Persian with a thick Azeri accent (at times with difficulties), Pezeshkian personifies the ethnic diversity of Iran. Unsurprisingly, he did well among Iran’s Azeri population in the northwestern provinces in the first round. But encouraged by the prospect of an Azeri president, in the second round, there was a 20% average increase in voter turnout in Ardabil, East Azerbaijan, and West Azerbaijan provinces.
His promise of a more inclusive government reflecting Iran’s ethnic and religious diversity appealed to voters in periphery regions. In Sunni Kurdish majority Kurdistan province, voter turnout increased from around 23% in the first round to 29% in the second. Turnout also increased in other provinces with a significant Kurdish population, particularly Kermanshah and West Azerbaijan. In Khuzestan province, which has a significant Sunni Arab population, voter turnout increased from around 30% to 40%. In Sunni Baluch-dominated Sistan and Baluchistan province, voter turnout increased from 30% to 51%.
The Many Challenges Facing Pezeshkian
Pezeshkian has a mandate to pursue his promise of a regime more representative of Iranian society, along with his economic and foreign policy promises, but he is likely to encounter opposition from political rivals, who will sabotage his policy initiatives to deny him success, and bureaucracies with a vested interest in preserving the status quo. Internationally, adversaries, and perhaps even Iranian allies, are bound to sabotage him.
Pezeshkian will discover the systemic limits to his powers as president even before his inauguration. He won the election with 16.38 million votes, yet according to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic, absent the signature of Khamenei on a decree formalizing the election, Pezeshkian cannot assume his responsibilities as the head of the executive branch. When appointing Cabinet ministers, he will discover the ministers of interior and intelligence are customarily and informally appointed by Khamenei and not the president. Appointing the defense minister may also be outside the president’s control, and the IRGC may impose its candidate on Pezeshkian. Once Pezeshkian introduces his Cabinet – his own selections and those imposed on him – to the Parliament for a vote of confidence, he may find his political rivals will sabotage his Cabinet by denying a vote of confidence to women or representatives of ethnic and religious minorities. However, Pezeshkian may have more influence when appointing vice presidents, governor generals, and government advisors, who do not need parliamentary approval.
As for his economic promises, Pezeshkian may have some success regarding a more equitable distribution of wealth. Reforming the universal basic income system to prevent wealthy citizens from receiving financial support is not likely to be opposed by the Parliament, where parliamentarians must meet ordinary voters (around 60% of them below the poverty line) every four years. He may also have some success reforming the subsidy system to benefit low-income groups. However, he will face significant resistance if he attempts to move against major players, such as the IRGC, which breaches the legal monopoly of the National Iranian Oil Company by selling Iran’s oil on the international black market and enriches itself at the cost of the Iranian state. Pezeshkian will also most likely face insurmountable difficulties if he tries to give a larger share of government infrastructure development projects to private contractors and deprive the Khatam al-Anbia Construction Headquarters, the contracting arm of the IRGC, of government projects.
The same applies to any attempts to correct the imbalance in Iran’s foreign policy orientation. In the televised debates, Pezeshkian carefully and indirectly called for Iran to be less dependent on the East. He consistently called for, within the parameters decided by Khamenei and the regime, Iran to reach an agreement resembling the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal with the United States, with the express purpose of achieving sanctions relief. Regarding the prospects for former President Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House, Pezeshkian famously said: “Trump is a businessman. We can talk with him.”
Should Pezeshkian manage to protect the economic interests of the IRGC – in particular, if he can persuade Washington to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations, which prohibits foreign companies from doing business with IRGC-owned companies – Pezeshkian may garner enough support for his nuclear diplomacy and defeat domestic attempts to sabotage his work.
The more symbolic but potentially explosive issue of the mandatory hijab, which sparked countrywide protests in the wake of the suspicious death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the “morality police” in 2022, is likely to cause a crisis with an uncertain outcome. The IRGC and the Law Enforcement Forces appear to have reached the conclusion that violent enforcement of the mandatory hijab, far from intimidating the urban middle class, is provoking them to take their protests to the streets and clash with the government. This favors Pezeshkian’s promise of a nonviolent approach and perhaps even greater personal freedoms to Iranian citizens. However, should the IRGC and organizations such as the Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice fear losing power – and in the case of the latter, their employment – they may continue violent enforcement and provoke public protests.
In general, despite Pezeshkian’s attempts at managing expectations and explaining the limits to the powers of the presidency, the mere fact that a candidate who does not appear to have been the favorite of Khamenei and the IRGC was elected increased public expectations. Should those expectations be frustrated, Pezeshkian’s presidency may well be similar to that of Khatami, with increased public protests and systemic sabotage of the president’s policies to prevent an Iranian Mikhail Gorbachev, the reformist whose reforms led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.