Pezeshkian’s presidency is Khamenei’s Hail Mary moment

A shorter version of this piece appeared in this week's Monday Briefing.
 

If the foreign policy rhetoric of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, leaves you bewildered, you’re not alone. Pezeshkian ran as a candidate who promised fundamental change, but in his first few weeks in office, he has under-delivered, to put it mildly. In the realm of foreign policy, the man who as a candidate deplored Tehran’s marginalization on the international stage has pretty much stuck to the regime’s slogans, which reflect the worldview of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader since 1989.

Nevertheless, it is critical to understand Khamenei’s plans for a Pezeshkian presidency at this moment in time. Changing course is a necessity for a regime beset by a long list of ailments, many of which are rooted in Tehran’s foreign policy choices. For Khamenei, Pezeshkian will not be as much of an instigator of change as he will be an implementor of policy shifts that the leader deems necessary.

Still, the personality of a president does matter in the Iranian system. In his second term, the over-confident Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tried, and failed, to force his agenda on Khamenei. Most notably, he sought to go over the head of the supreme leader in signaling to the Americans, a red-line for Khamenei. For now, however, this is a case of comparing apples and oranges. The new president, Khamenei hopes, will remain a team player and execute his plans.

In this effort to change course, Pezeshkian will play his cards very carefully. He knows that as president he cannot force his agenda on Khamenei, but he might be able to persuade the supreme leader — and the powerful Revolutionary Guards — about the merits of a less confrontational posture toward the outside world. This juggling act of preserving revolutionary idealism versus pursuing necessary pragmatism is on full display these days.

Continuity or change?

Wanting to pay homage to Khamenei’s desire for a pan-Islamic and revolutionary foreign policy, Pezeshkian last week lamented Muslim impotence in the face of Israeli policies. “If Muslims were united, would Israel have dared to commit these mistakes in this region? Not only Israel, but America, Europe, and any other power, could they do any of these things?” This is vintage sloganeering that is music to Khamenei’s ears, and in practice it means nothing other than pretending that the mantle of Islamic leadership is within Tehran’s reach.

Pezeshkian’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has been tasked with pursuing tangible results and not chasing pipe dreams. Araghchi has made a few major statements so far, including:

• Iran will continue to prioritize ties with Russia and China;
   

• Iran will continue to support the Axis of Resistance and the struggle for Palestinian rights; and
   

• Iran will not try to revive the 2015 nuclear deal but will look for ways to “manage” the tensions with the Americans to prevent war.

That all sounds like policy continuity in Tehran, but there is one exception. Araghchi also made a rather curious comment: that Iran will “prioritize” the Europeans if they are willing to end their hostile attitude toward the Islamic Republic, as he put it. Will this former deputy to Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif be able to shift Tehran’s foreign policy in short order the way his former boss did in late 2013?

That remains to be seen. But no doubt Araghchi’s overture to the Europeans was pre-approved by Khamenei in the same way that Zarif received a green light in 2013 from the supreme leader to pursue nuclear détente with the Western powers. The idea of prioritizing the Europeans, and not the Americans, demonstrates both the pressure Tehran is under to rebalance its foreign policy but also the regime’s overall limited ability to maneuver on the most sensitive of issues. After all, it is not Brussels but Washington that is the gatekeeper in Tehran’s efforts to reduce its marginalization on the international stage. Still, for Khamenei, the American question is just one of a number of critical challenges.

Khamenei’s predicaments

The Pezeshkian presidency is part of an attempt by the regime to reinvent itself. It is meant to usher in a new chapter, one in which the plain-spoken president would bring the regime and the people closer together. His presidency would be the opposite of that of Ebrahim Raisi’s, whose government’s policies were aimed at “purifying” the regime and purging anyone deemed insufficiently loyal to the Raisi network.

Once Raisi launched this purge, it was clear as day that the regime was in a downward spiral. During 2021-24, it lost many of its best technocrats, particularly those involved in economic policymaking and in the foreign ministry’s diplomatic cadre. Furthermore, repressions against the people, rather than attempts to seek their consent, became the unsustainable norm.

Khamenei, Iran’s ultimate arbiter, saw this train wreck coming and used Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash on May 19 to apply the brakes. After all, nothing is more sacrosanct to the Islamic Republic than its own political survival, a belief that was stressed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the regime’s founder. Therefore, as Pezeshkian himself has said repeatedly, his name would not have come out of the ballot box if it had not been for the current supreme leader. Hence, if Iran decides to soften its policies — either at home or over its nuclear program, as Khamenei signaled on Aug. 28 — it is because that is what the supreme leader wants and Pezeshkian is only too happy to oblige.

Inside Iran, commentators speculate that this effort to reinvent the regime has both foreign and domestic opponents. Israel’s killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh immediately following Pezeshkian’s inauguration is widely viewed in Tehran as an Israeli effort to derail the new president’s agenda before it even gets off the ground. Israel is goading Iran to retaliate, the thinking goes, as a way of ensuring it remains isolated on the international stage. Such a reading of Israeli motives is why Tehran has yet to avenge Haniyeh’s assassination as it strives not to fall into this perceived Israeli trap.

There are also domestic opponents of a reinvented, and therefore likely more pragmatic, Islamic Republic, which points to another challenge for Khamenei: how to prevent far-right elements within the regime from increasingly dominating the political system.

The recent presidential elections vividly illustrated this rivalry. Pezeshkian’s main rival was Saeed Jalili, who represented the Paydari (Steadfastness) faction. This faction, which has been in existence for about 12 years, professes loyalty to Khamenei, but the supreme leader increasingly seems to fear its members’ predatory ways and its plans to install one of their own as his successor after his death.

In short, Khamenei evidently sees Paydari’s uncompromising stance toward both domestic and foreign opponents as a recipe for greater volatility at a time when the regime needs to maximize stability. Putting more power in the hands of the regime’s far-right, the supreme leader seems to think, is only asking for trouble from an Iranian population already forced to deal with the results of years of incompetent and ideologically driven policies that have brought Iran to a dismal state. Evidence of this abounds, including the fact that Iran’s middle class has shrunk from 70% to 55% of the population in the last 10 years due to the impact of sanctions, corruption, and economic mismanagement.

Going forward, the Paydari faction will be among the biggest detractors of Pezeshkian’s presidency. So far, Khamenei has made it clear that the new president should be left alone to bring about change. Khamenei’s protection of Pezeshkian — as self-serving as it is — will give the president some time and space to think of new policies and keep his opponents at bay. But there will be a moment when the rubber will meet the road.

Khamenei’s plan for Pezeshkian’s presidency, aimed at recovering some public legitimacy for the regime and helping to ease Tehran’s international isolation, will require an actual change in the policies that have brought Iran to this point. The list is long but includes domestic repression and costly foreign policy actions, including turning the United States and Israel into eternal enemies. Unless Khamenei gives Pezeshkian some latitude to implement change on key policy questions, then no amount of protection from the supreme leader can help the new president turn things around so that it will be felt in a positive and tangible way by the Iranian people.

Alex Vatanka is the director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute and a senior fellow with MEI’s Black Sea Program.

Photo by Iran's Supreme Leader Press Office/Anadolu via Getty Images