To the surprise of many, a relatively unknown candidate won Iran’s presidential elections. Masoud Pezeshkian, a parliamentarian and former health minister who had next to no name recognition outside Iran and is not even an especially high-profile figure domestically, prevailed against arch-hardliner Saeed Jalili in the runoff on July 5.
The unexpected victory of a figure hailing from the reformist end of the Islamic Republic’s limited political spectrum—for the first time since 2001—raises far more questions than answers: about the extent of his authority, his approach to his country’s nuclear standoff with the West, and his ability to navigate a volatile regional landscape.
Given his blunt criticism of the country’s trajectory, Pezeshkian’s election stunned many observers, who believed that with the looming succession of 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the system was unlikely to deviate from the direction set by its most conservative elements, who have increasingly consolidated power in recent years.
Questions about how Iran got to this point are overshadowed, however, by speculation regarding where it might go from here. Some in the West will likely paint Pezeshkian with the same brush as they did his reformist predecessors: as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the more moderate façade of a regime whose nuclear and regional ambitions have not changed.
Others may view him as the savior charged with extricating Iran from its socio-economic predicament, willing to make concessions in exchange for commensurate sanctions relief from the West. Which will he be?
Several elements can help predict the future course. The first has to do with the nature of Iranian politics. Presidents are far from all powerful, having to contend with myriad competing centers of authority and influence, overt and shadowy, of which the Supreme Leader is only the most obvious.
First, the fundamentals have not changed: Ayatollah Khamenei retains the final say, friction between him and the president is all but inevitable, and conservative control of all other state institutions will constrain Pezeshkian. At the same time, presidents are not mere figureheads: Witness the differences in style and substance between Hassan Rouhani, who negotiated a nuclear deal with the world powers and recognized the need for at least some loosening of social restrictions, and Ebrahim Raisi, who failed to restore that nuclear deal and doubled down on enforcing Islamic dress codes for women that led to the 2022 massive upheaval and brutal crackdown.
Second, the new president has both a unique advantage and disadvantage. He refrained from making any concrete commitments during the campaign, focusing instead on his governing approach while admitting to the limits he might face as president. By appearing not too disruptive of the political establishment while tempering societal expectations, he has created room for maneuver. Yet the elections granted him a weak mandate, given one of the lowest presidential turnouts in the Islamic Republic’s history (a reported 49.8 percent) and the fact that he won only a quarter of the eligible electorate’s votes.
Third, what Pezeshkian can achieve in foreign policy is determined more by elements outside of his control than by his own ability and willingness to engage with Iran’s adversaries, above all the United States. The most critical factor will be the outcome of the U.S. presidential elections. Most diplomatic progress between Iran and the United States since the 1979 revolution—tentative efforts at détente in the late 1990s, the nuclear accord in 2015—has occurred during a Democratic president’s second term.
Unlike the late President Raisi, whose outgoing administration was largely dismissive of relations with the West, Pezeshkian and his team vowed to balance a renewed opening to the West with what have been growing ties with non-Western powers, notably Russia and China. Yet seasoned diplomats likely to return to power in a Pezeshkian administration have expressed disappointment at what they regarded as the Biden administration’s foot dragging during the brief 2021 overlap with the Rouhani government, which denied them the opportunity to restore the nuclear deal they helped seal, which Barack Obama negotiated and Donald Trump ditched.
A second Trump term poses an even bigger challenge. Given his advisors’ complaints that Biden has weakened Washington’s hand through lax enforcement of sanctions and his long-standing belief in negotiating from a position of perceived strength, Trump is likely to return to his policy of “maximum” pressure, which rather than bringing Iran back to the negotiating table on terms more favorable to the United States led it to become more aggressive in its nuclear pursuit and regional power projection, even bringing Iran and the United States uncomfortably close to a serious confrontation several times between 2019 and 2020.
There is also bad blood between Iran and Trump, who in 2020 ordered the killing of Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ powerful Quds Force. Meanwhile, the U.S. suspects Iran of plotting to assassinate senior U.S officials to exact revenge.
An expansion of the war in Gaza further into the Middle East could also hamper Pezeshkian’s ability to constructively engage with the West. Should hostilities escalate into all-out conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the crown jewel of Iran’s network of nonstate partners in the region, this could render Iran even more toxic in the West at a time when its internal repression, arms transfers to Russia, continued nuclear expansion, and imprisonment of dual and foreign nationals have already driven relations to a nadir.
The same could occur if the Iran-supported Houthis in Yemen resume cross border attacks against Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, reversing the de-escalatory trajectory that Iran and its Gulf Arab neighbors have been pursuing in the past few years.
Still, having more voices of restraint in Iran’s decision-making process—not least in comparison to the potential of a Jalili presidency—is a net positive. Iran’s strategic decisions are made by a small group of senior officials who are both relatively insulated from, and yet reflect, alterations in formal institutional structures, including as a result of elections.
The political uncertainty in Washington and the chaos in the region do not leave much space for the United States and Iran to reach a new agreement in the short term, but they should at least try to restore some of the informal understandings they reached in 2023, which aimed at keeping a lid on Iran’s nuclear advancements, preventing attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, and limiting the extent of Iran’s assistance to Russia for its war against Ukraine in return for some access to Iran’s frozen assets abroad. This would help Biden keep tensions with Iran on a low burn and give Pezeshkian a minor economic reprieve as he takes office.
This would be a mere temporary fix. A nuclear deal today is harder to imagine than it was before 2015. Positions have hardened: What little trust that existed at the time has dangerously eroded, not least because the Trump administration backed out of the last agreement. Iran’s nuclear program has advanced substantially, and sanctions have proliferated.
Western doubts about Pezeshkian’s ability to deliver a deal are matched by Tehran’s skepticism that the United States in particular can accept a modus vivendi with the Islamic Republic or is capable of delivering effective and sustainable sanctions relief. And the clock will be ticking fast as the U.N. Security Council resolution that endorsed the 2015 deal is set to expire in October 2025, depriving the West of a major leverage point: the ability to hold Iran’s feet to the fire by threatening to snap back international sanctions lifted in 2015.
Given Iran’s understandable fears of another Trump administration abandoning any deal they might negotiate now, as well as the toxicity of Iran in U.S. domestic politics, the Biden administration is not in a position before November to engage with the Pezeshkian administration in a forward-thinking process to explore a more sustainable diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis and other areas of disagreement. The task will once again fall on the shoulders of the Europeans who, since 2003, have led the nuclear negotiations with Tehran.
The first opportunity for serious talks will be on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September. Laying the groundwork could help a future Democratic administration, should there be one, make rapid progress after the November election. In the event of a second Trump presidency, such groundwork might at least offer it a choice: find a mutually beneficial arrangement with Tehran or risk another perilous confrontation that would only further bog down Washington in the Middle East.
The promise embodied by Pezeshkian’s election can either materialize or fizzle. As he takes office and comes face to face with myriad domestic and foreign challenges, it would be a good idea for the United States and Europe to constructively engage President Pezeshkian, offer him some limited economic relief and at least test the proposition that his administration can shift Iranian policy at home and abroad.
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