12 July 2024

Is Iran about to open up to the West?

The election of a reformist president suggests that the supreme leader is worried about the country’s global isolation.

Election nerds have been spoiled lately with so many votes taking place in major countries. This was especially true last weekend with voters in France, UK and Iran voting for a different direction in their countries.

Of course, as the song goes, “one of these things is not like the others”.

Elections in Iran are far from free and fair, and most power belongs not to the elected president that voters selected this month but to the unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His long list of powers includes a dominant role in deciding who gets to run in elections in the first place. Iranians know this, which is why 60 per cent of them refused to vote in the first round of the elections, a historic low. In the run-offs, on 5 July, the turn-out rose to 50 per cent, still low historically.

But it’s not been a total charade. The elections represented a genuine competition between the regime’s different factions. The presidency passing to Masoud Pezeshkian, the first politician from Iran’s reformist faction to assume the position since 2005, is significant. It also means a potential change in the country’s foreign policy orientation. A 69-year-old former cardiac surgeon, Pezeshkian couldn’t have run without the blessing of Khamenei; an unelected body loyal to the supreme leader vets all candidates in the first place. And Pezeshkian repeatedly declared his loyalty to the head of state during the campaign. But the very fact that he was allowed to run suggests Khamenei is worried about Iran’s prolonged global isolation.

In the final run-off round of voting, the two remaining candidates presented sharply different directions for the country. For Pezeshkian’s rival, the fundamentalist Saeed Jalili, Iran’s isolation from the West and the crushing sanctions imposed on the Iranian economy weren’t a concern. He believes Iran should sharply turn to an anti-Western alliance and cement its relationship with countries such as Russia. One idea he repeatedly touted in televised presidential debates was Iran exporting vegetables to Russia to make up for the latter’s disruption of trade with the European Union. He alleged this business idea would be worth $11bn, although fact-checkers disagreed.

Pezeshkian could not have campaigned on a more different agenda. Even Iran’s economic ties with countries such as China hinged on sanctions being lifted, he asserted. He complained about the fact that Iran has been forced to give huge discounts on exports to Beijing and other third countries in order to circumvent Western sanctions. He advocated a return to diplomatic engagement with the West, a path previously tested by the centrist Hassan Rouhani, who was president from 2013 until 2021 and is still loudly hated by hardliners.

Personnel speaks louder than words and Pezeshkian’s front team shows his different approach. Acting effectively as Pezeshkian’s running mate was Javad Zarif, the foreign minister under Rouhani. No other Iranian statesman symbolises a desire to negotiate with the West, and particularly the US, more than the American-educated Zarif who has the rare distinction of being both a confidante of Khamenei and a favourite of the regime’s reformists. Zarif has already been appointed chair of president-elect Pezeshkian’s foreign policy working group. His old comrade-in-arms and deputy, Abbas Araghchi, is likely to be appointed foreign minister in the new cabinet.

Khamenei’s own world-view is much closer to Jalili than Pezeshkian. But one reason he might have secretly rooted for the latter’s victory is his strategic sense that Iran is becoming too dangerously pressed by the West and its sanctions. The possible return of Donald Trump to the White House was repeatedly mentioned on the Iranian campaign trail. One hardliner candidate even accused his opponents of fanning “Trump-phobia” to justify their own return to power.

But Iranians also closely watched the UK elections where Keir Starmer’s sweeping victory has been expected for months. A nation’s move from the centre right to centre left usually augurs well when it comes to diplomatic engagement with Tehran, but this might not be quite the case this time.

Many opponents of the Iranian regime have welcomed Starmer’s victory since he has pledged to put the militia Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) on the UK’s list of terrorist organisations, something the Tories never did. To herald Starmer’s victory, right-leaning Persian-language outlet Kayhan London ran the headline “Opponents of IRGC’s terrorist designation fall from power”, while left-leaning Amsterdam-based Zamaneh wondered if Starmer’s rise to power would bring about “a harsher foreign policy against Iran”. Meanwhile, Iran’s state media has spent years attacking Starmer while praising his predecessor as Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who once regularly appeared on Tehran’s English-language mouthpiece Press TV.

Those advocating for an even more hawkish policy on Iran thus hope to have an ally in Starmer. “The Labour Party has pledged to proscribe Iran’s IRGC,” the DC-based outfit United Against Nuclear Iran recently declared, adding “and this will be Sir Keir Starmer’s first real policy test on anti-Semitism”. The hawks might even dream of a possible Trump-Starmer partnership, united against Tehran.

This would be wishful thinking. What’s lost on many hawkish fans of Trump is the former president’s aversion to the neoconservative past of his party. While in office, he adopted a policy of maximum pressure against Iran, but he repeatedly said he had no desire for regime change and wanted to make a deal with the Islamic Republic under the same leaders. In short, even if the Starmer-Trump duo does become the Atlanticist team countering Iran, they’ll likely engage in the negotiations advocated by Pezeshkian and Tehran’s new diplomatic helm.

Not that such talks will be easy. Roadblocks will include not just Iran’s rapidly advancing nuclear programme, but its support for anti-Israel militias such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. Such support is fundamental to the regime’s foundations and Khamenei’s outlook, and in this area the new reformist president-elect doesn’t appear ready for change. Pezeshkian has already written to Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, pledging continued support. He also spoke on the phone with Vladimir Putin and, according to Kremlin, declared a readiness to “expand mutual collaboration”. Putin might not be happy with the return of Zarif, whose dislike for a cosy Tehran-Moscow relationship is not a secret. (Others in Rouhani’s orbit, including a former chair of Iranian parliament’s national security committee, have gone much further, harshly criticising Iran’s support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine and even its support for the anti-Israel militias.) But the president-elect’s team of advisers also includes Mehdi Sanayi, a former ambassador to Moscow who speaks Russian and is well-liked in Russian diplomatic and security circles. He is likely to receive a position in the new government.

For now, the Islamic Republic’s deep-seated anti-West and anti-Israel positions – as well as its support for terror militias across the region – are not likely going anywhere. But Pezeshkian’s ascent very much suggests a different approach to the West: an attempt to de-escalate and to reach a deal to alleviate the sanctions on the Iranian economy. Like much else in the country, the shape and tenor of this new approach will be influenced by constant battles inside the establishment.