Iran Update, July 6, 2024
Pezeshkian’s presidency is unlikely to generate meaningful changes within the regime. Pezeshkian supports regime policies like mandatory veiling. Pezeshkian has previously critiqued the Noor Plan—a 2024 Iranian law enforcement plan that often violently enforces veiling—but continues to support mandatory veiling within Iran and has argued that the regime must reform the way it educates girls so that they do not question the need to veil.[20] Pezeshkian has also boasted about his role in enforcing mandatory veiling in hospitals and universities shortly after the Islamic Revolution.[21] Pezeshkian has repeatedly reiterated his commitment to enforcing Khamenei’s policies throughout his campaign. The president also lacks the authority to pursue policies different from the supreme leader’s edicts, even if the president aims to pursue policies separate from the supreme leader.[22]
Pezeshkian’s presidency suggests that Khamenei prioritized the regime’s legitimacy over his individual legacy in this instance. Khamenei implicitly criticized Pezeshkian’s campaign policies and espoused Jalili’s nuclear and foreign policy views in a speech on June 25, which suggested that Khamenei preferred Jalili over Pezeshkian.[23] Khamenei previously paved the way for his preferred candidate, Ebrahim Raisi, to win the August 2021 presidential election.[24] The fact that Khamenei allowed Pezeshkian to win the election suggests that Khamenei prioritized preserving the Islamic Republic’s veneer as a “religious democracy” over installing a president who more closely aligns with his hardline stances on domestic and foreign issues.
It is particularly noteworthy that Khamenei allowed Pezeshkian to win given that the next Iranian president may oversee Khamenei’s succession. Khamenei is currently 85 years old and has almost certainly begun to consider who will succeed him. That Khamenei allowed Pezeshkian to win suggests that he believes Pezeshkian could maintain order in the regime and Iranian society during a potential succession crisis. It also suggests that Khamenei prioritizes regime survival over having a president in power whose views and policies directly align with his own.
Khamenei may have calculated that manipulating the July 5 election results could stoke widespread unrest. The regime previously engineered the election results between reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi and hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, which galvanized a months-long anti-regime protest wave.[25] The regime might be particularly wary of public unrest given that it recently suppressed the 2022-2023 Mahsa Amini movement and that much of the Iranian population still holds sociocultural, political, and economic grievances against the regime.[26]
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-july-6-2024
Post-election statements by both President-elect Masoud Pezeshkian and the supreme leader indicate that the Pezeshkian administration will not change the regime's trajectory. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei stated his desire for Pezeshkian to continue the policies of former president Ebrahim Raisi in a message on July 6 following the presidential election.[8] Pezeshkian issued a statement to the people of Iran on July 6 following the election thanking Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for opening the field for “participation and competition.”[9] Pezeshkian has repeatedly reiterated his commitment to enforcing Khamenei’s policies throughout his campaign. Pezeshkian also prayed at the tomb of first Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini on July 6 after the election to “renew his allegiance to Khomeini's ideals.”[10] Masoud Pezeshkian will be sworn in as the ninth president of the Islamic Republic of Iran on August 4 or 5, according to a member of Iran's parliament presiding board.[11]
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-july-7-2024