By Александр Бердюгин @Adobe Stock
Iranians elected their first reformist in two decades. Don’t expect too much change in the country’s behavior. Benoit Faucon reports in The Wall Street Journal:
Iranians turned out in higher numbers than in previous votes to elect a reformist president who ran on a platform of re-engaging with the West and loosening the country’s strict moral codes for women.
Liberal voters, confronted with a stark choice between a cautious reformer and a tough hard-liner, shook off some of the disillusionment that had led to very low turnout in the initial presidential vote a week ago and turned out to the polls for a runoff that put a reform candidate in office for the first time in two decades.
Little-known politician Masoud Pezeshkian, a 69-year-old surgeon, won with more than 53% of the vote, beating his hard-line rival Saeed Jalili, 58, according to official results announced by the Interior Ministry on state television. Turnout was 49.8%, up from 40% in the initial election and at the high end of speculation ahead of the vote.
Now Pezeshkian will have to operate in the treacherous theater of Iranian politics to manage a battered economy and an increasingly disaffected population that has erupted in protests repeatedly over the past decade. He has vowed to work to restore a 2015 pact that lifted international sanctions in exchange for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program, rein in the country’s hated morality police who force women to cover their hair, and stand against curbs on the internet.
As the second-highest-ranking official in Iran after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the president oversees economic policies and appoints a cabinet that includes key decision makers in areas from foreign affairs to the strategic oil industry. But decisions can be blocked by the parliament and by the supreme leader, who has the final say on policy.
The president has little influence on security and military matters, which are in the hands of Khamenei and the hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—meaning the election isn’t likely to affect the country’s confrontational approach to the U.S. and support for militants across the Middle East.
Elections are also tightly controlled. Iran’s government approves all candidates. Still, the government tolerates a degree of competitive presidential campaigning and voting in hopes of appearing responsive and keeping disgruntled citizens from dropping out of the system.
Read more here.
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