Masoud Pezeshkian becomes Iran’s new president
Photo by: TASS.
In Iran, the results of the second round of early presidential elections have been announced. They had to be held due to the tragic death of Ibrahim Raisi in a plane crash.
Iran’s new president is Masoud Pezeshkian, who is considered a moderate reformer. 53% of voters voted for him and 47% for his opponent, the conservative Said Jalili. In the first round, neither of them managed to obtain more than 50% of the votes needed to win.
Pezeshkian advocates for Tehran to improve relations with the West. He has previously repeatedly criticised the Iranian government establishment. His victory is associated with the hopes of Iranian society for greater social freedoms and a more pragmatic foreign policy. It is also believed that the new president will be able to resolve the confrontation between Iran and Western countries, which is intensifying as Iran’s nuclear programme develops.
Political scientists believe that the new president is unlikely to be able to influence Iran’s domestic and foreign policy much because the actual administration of the republic is under the jurisdiction of Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is also the commander-in-chief of the Iranian military. It is the ayatollah who makes the final decisions in Iran on almost all government initiatives, including international relations. Consequently, even if Pezeshkian were to declare Tehran’s peculiar turn towards the West, Russian-Iranian relations are unlikely to cool down.
On the eve of the run-off, he told a meeting with voters: “If I cannot fulfil my election promises, I will say goodbye to politics. There is no point in wasting your life if you cannot serve the people.”
The inauguration of Iran’s new president is expected to take place next week. Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Masoud Pezeshkian on his victory.
Pezeshkian is 69 years old, a doctor by profession and a well-known cardiac surgeon in Iran. His father is Iranian Azerbaijani and his mother is Kurdish. In 2001-2005 he was the Minister of Health of Iran. A widower – he lost his wife and one of his sons in a car accident in 1994. After that he never remarried and he single-handedly raised and brought up his surviving sons and daughters.
