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Iran Update, July 5, 2024

Iran held the second round of its presidential election between ultraconservative hardliner candidate Saeed Jalili and moderate candidate Masoud Pezeshkian on July 5.[11] The Iranian Election Headquarters extended the voting deadline from 1800 to 0000 local time, likely to try to increase voter turnout.[12] This action is not unprecedented; the regime has previously extended voting hours during both presidential and parliamentary elections, including during the June 28 first-round presidential election.[13] The Interior Ministry will likely announce the final election results in the morning local time on July 6. CTP-ISW will publish an analysis of the results on July 6.

Iran is continuing to promote greater financial and monetary cooperation with Russia to try to undermine Western sanctions. Central Bank of Iran Governor Mohammad Reza Farzin traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, on July 3 to attend a financial conference.[14] Farzin called on BRICS members to form a financial institution similar to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).[15] The FATF blacklisted Iran in February 2020 for failing to implement anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing policies.[16] Farzin also called on Russia, China, and Iran to use their national currencies—rather than the US dollar—in economic transactions.[17] Farzin invited Russia to join the Asian Clearing Union, which is a payment arrangement in which the central banks of member states “settle payments for intra-regional transactions...on a net multilateral basis.”[18] Iran, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka currently comprise the Asian Clearing Union. Belarus applied to join the Asian Clearing Union in May 2023.[19]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-july-5-2024

49.8 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots in Iran's runoff presidential election, according to the final vote count results announced by the Interior Ministry.
30,530,157 ballots were cast on Friday, out of which Masoud Pezeshkian secured 16,384,403 votes (53.6%) and Saeed Jalili won 13,538,179 votes (44.3%). 607,575 votes were invalid (2%), the official results show.

https://x.com/IranIntl_En/status/1809447696333177253

Pezeshkian promised no radical changes to Iran's Shiite theocracy in his campaign and long has held Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the final arbiter of all matters of state in the country.

He will also not lead change in Iran's contentious relations with Israel, saying after he voted on Friday that should he win, he would “try to have friendly relations with all countries except Israel.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/iranian-reformist-masoud-pezeshkian-wins-presidential-election/

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