Eye on the Middle East | Post Pezeshkian’s win, the said and unsaid of Iran’s future foreign policy

Writing for Iran’s partially state-controlled Tehran Times on July 12, Iranian President-elect Masoud Pezeshkian struck a balanced chord. For Iranian foreign policy, balance almost invariably refers to an increase/decrease of its anti-West posture — never an East-West balance in the true sense. While he reiterated that the United States needs to understand that Iran will not respond to pressure and complained against Europe’s failure to uphold its commitments to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) after Washington’s unilateral withdrawal, there are significant instances of a “Yes, but” in Pezeshkian’s first coherent post-election statement.

While claiming that Europe failed to ensure effective banking transactions, effective protection of companies from US sanctions, and the promotion of investments in Iran, Pezeshkian stated, “Despite these missteps, I look forward to engaging with European countries…to set our relations on the right path.” More notably, while exhaustively elaborating on the sectors for Iran-Europe cooperation, Pezeshkian spares no words to praise China for its “deeply valuable” friendship, its 25-year roadmap with Iran, and further collaboration to “advance towards a new global order”. However, while reaffirming cooperation with Russia with equal vigour, Pezeshkian adds, “We strive for peace for the people of Russia and Ukraine”. The latter is a telling addition for a state that is sanctioned by Kyiv, for its strategic support to Moscow – both diplomatically and militarily.

By now, global coverage of Pezeshkian has sufficiently highlighted his rather categorical remarks against the erstwhile Raisi-led hardliner administration and his relatively liberal views. However, the former health minister and deputy speaker made this position clear even earlier, during the protests against Mahsa Amini’s death. “We want to implement religious faith using force. This is scientifically impossible,” Pezeshkian had vociferously asserted on live TV in September 2022. On Amini’s custodial death itself, he added, “Everybody should step forward and be held accountable, rather than capture that girl, beat her up, and eventually deliver her body (to her family).” In his election campaign, Pezeshkian’s support for the protestors was second only to his fierce criticism of the Raisi-led regime’s “radical” anti-West stance and his promises to bring down the “walls that have been built around the country by the hardliners.” The key question is, how did a relatively reclusive moderate who was disallowed from contesting the 2021 elections get here, especially in a state where the electoral process and outcome are far from fair? More crudely, why did Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei “allow” this? The answer possibly points to a trijunction of domestic, regional, and global developments which has brought Iran to a watershed moment in Middle Eastern geopolitics.

“It’s the economy, stupid”

James Carville’s immortal quip is almost fully sufficient to describe the motivations of the Iranian regime’s comfort in not barring Pezeshkian again. This column has shown earlier that while Raisi was ushered in with much hope in 2021, both hardline leaders (directly), as well as Khamenei himself (indirectly), expressed considerable disappointment in Raisi’s economic choices and his failure to drive Iran’s sanctions-riddled economy out of turmoil, and his failure to effectively manage the intense protests sparked by the harshness of Iran’s morality police.

With controversial subsidy reforms that sparked deadly clashes between protestors and security forces and record levels of inflation between 2019 and 2024, the Iranian economy has struggled to meet popular needs since the reimposition of sanctions. Evidently, despite Chinese support and an increase in oil exports, the adverse effects of western sanctions have dented Iran’s efforts at building its “resistance economy”. As the question of his succession hangs heavier over Khamenei, the Iranian leader can ill afford a hostile population that makes the oldest of economic demands, that of bread over bullets. In his recent public addresses, while Khamenei’s focus on the economy has been noticeable, it has couched a more subtle message — that the solution to the economic crisis lies “outside”, meaning sanctions relief.

Factoring in geopolitics

A useful point of departure to show Iran’s recent willingness to compromise with the US is the reduction in proxy attacks against US assets in Iraq and Syria, especially in February. It showed Iranian flexibility in reducing antagonistic engagement with Washington even as its efforts at supporting proxies against Israel continue, as does Tel Aviv’s relentless bombardment of Gaza. As Israel-Hezbollah frictions only grow, on July 10, Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah chief, declared that regardless of the electoral outcome, Iranian support for the resistance will not change. Consequently, Tehran attempts to distinguish its renewed anti-Israeli effort, from its broader anti-West stance (Pezeshkian’s election manifesto declared him as neither anti-West nor East), especially at a time when it also seeks to reassure its regional neighbours of its desire for stability, beginning with a ceasefire in Gaza. Pezeshkian’s letter takes care to positively name all of Iran’s Arab neighbours and celebrate the resumption of ties with Saudi Arabia, as Tehran arguably finds increasing comfort in Arab unease over Israel’s war in Gaza, notwithstanding continued Arab interest in economic ties with Israel. Essentially, it marks a reorientation of Iran’s alignment in the Middle East — preserve its anti-Israel credentials, reassure its Arab neighbours and Europe of Tehran’s desire for good ties, draw in the United States into negotiations for sanctions relief after a deadlocked process in Vienna under the Raisi administration.

Iran’s President-elect, then, is no Mohammad Khatami who benefited from a rare positive character of US-Iran engagement in the years before 9/11 with a bubble of cooperation to dislodge the Taliban in Afghanistan, or Hassan Rouhani who tested new boundaries with Iranian hardliners with the nuclear deal but burnt up his political capital due to Trump’s JCPOA withdrawal and his domestic gaffes. Even as Pezeshkian belongs to Khatami’s old reformist school, his job today is to find a modus vivendi in perpetuity with the West, especially in so far as it leads to long-term sanctions relief. Learning from Rouhani’s failings, Pezeshkian has refrained from over-committing (arguably in light of a potential second Trump administration) and has supplied enough evidence of loyalty to Khamenei and alignment with the IRGC. Staying within Khamenei’s tolerance threshold, Pezeshkian is a cushion for Iran’s international sanctions relief efforts and preparation for future domestic transitions. This means allowing staccato-like bursts of reformist expression to refresh the language of Iranian foreign policy, without prejudicing the fundamental pillars of Iran’s revolutionary outlook. Indeed, suppressive arrests have all but continued domestically, with the arrest of a dissident lawyer just a day after Pezeshkian’s win.

Bashir Ali Abbas is a research associate at the Council for Strategic and Defense Research, New Delhi, and a South Asia Visiting Fellow at the Stimson Center, Washington DC. The views expressed are personal.