Mohamed Javad Zarif is a diplomat who believes in smiling and in being conciliatory towards Iran’s “enemies.” This is what the former foreign minister (2013-2021), architect of the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and the world powers, wrote in his memoirs in 2013. The diplomat was chosen by the Iranian president-elect, Masud Pezeshkian, who takes office on Tuesday, to draw up the list of ministers for his future government. A declaration of intent for what is considered his priority in foreign policy: the resumption of negotiations on this nuclear pact that, until 2018, allowed the lifting of international sanctions against Iran in exchange for supervision of the country’s atomic program to ensure that it does not intend to manufacture nuclear weapons. Domestically, the campaign promise that he will try to eliminate police patrols that stop unveiled women by the man who will be Iran’s first reformist president in 15 years is seen as a barometer of his willingness to “reach out” to all Iranians, especially women and young people.
These two groups are two of the battering rams of internal pressure against a regime that many citizens have turned their backs on. Women and people under 30 – a third of the population – took centre stage in the latest protests against the authorities, sparked by the death of Yina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, who died in police custody on 16 September 2022. Three days earlier she had been arrested in Tehran for wearing the obligatory veil incorrectly. Many Iranians see the death as a consequence of the tightening of police persecution of women, fuelled by the ultra-conservative turn that culminated in the election of Ebrahim Raisi as president in 2021. Raisi’s death in an accident in May forced Iran to call a presidential election in which Pezeshkian, former health minister in the 2000s under the charismatic reformist president Mohamed Khatami, won in the second round on 5 July.
Some analysts have seen the green light from power for this cardiovascular surgeon to pass the pre-screening of candidates and run for office as a change of direction; a relative halt to that ultra-conservative turn that, together with the country’s dire economic situation, created the conditions for the popular uprising triggered by Amini’s death. The regime silenced the protests with a crackdown in which at least 550 people died and 60,000 were arrested, according to the UN.
A political system headed by an 85-year-old man who has not yet appointed a successor thus saw how, in addition to the strong external economic pressure of sanctions – reinstated by the Donald Trump administration after unilaterally abandoning the nuclear pact in 2018 – protests demonstrated the disengagement of many Iranians in a country with an impoverished middle class, 30% of the population below the extreme poverty line, annual inflation of around 35% and misogynistic legislation that oppresses women. The successive record levels of electoral abstention since 2020, up to 59% of the electorate in the legislative elections in March, also sent a message to those in power, stresses by telephone Iranologist Raffaele Mauriello, a professor at Allameh Tabataba’i University in Tehran.
“Leader [Jamenei] “The regime has realised that, with these numbers, something is not working and that changes have to be made,” he stresses. Changes such as the green light for the candidacy of the president-elect, who has promised to alleviate “external and internal tension” in his country. According to the fundamentally economic reading that the regime makes, at least in public, of popular disengagement, the reduction of this tension depends largely on the foreseeable improvement of the exhausted Iranian economy if the nuclear pact is renewed and sanctions are eased.
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Promises
Iran’s ceremony for the presidential proclamation made it clear on Sunday that Pezeshkian will find it difficult to make major changes on certain issues. At an event in Tehran, the reformist was confirmed as head of government by the supreme leader. In his speech, Khamenei offered him his support, provided that he is “consistent with the straight path of Islam and the Revolution.”
Some of Pezeshkian’s promises are difficult to reconcile with this warning. As on other occasions, rather than referring to the use of a garment, the question of the veil is also a symbol on this occasion, an example of how the new president will have limited room for action in matters that the clerical establishment considers vital, and the veil is one of them. Pezeshkian does not oppose the law that makes it mandatory to wear it, a rule that he could not repeal in an ultra-conservative Parliament. He has, however, criticised the fact that Iranian women who have dispensed with the hijab are detained with violence. During his campaign he promised to eliminate the police patrols that harass them. Then he added: “If it is in my hands.”
Zarif, the architect of the nuclear deal being drafted by the new government, is a defender of the Islamic veil. If the aim of engaging in dialogue to revive the stalled nuclear negotiations is taken for granted – Khamenei alluded on Tuesday to the fact that sanctions against Iran “could be lifted” if “honourable” means were used – the question of police persecution of Iranian women without a hijab is much more up in the air.
The list of ministers will probably include “a female minister”, Mauriello predicts. More significant than their presence will be the ministries they hold. In Raisi’s government, there was already a vice-president, Ensiyeh Kazali, in a department with few powers: Women’s Affairs. After taking office on Tuesday, the president will have 15 days to submit his cabinet to the ultra-conservative parliament, where the ministers will be voted on one by one. The head of government has published a list with 18 criteria for choosing the ministers. Among them is meeting the demands of young people and women. Pezeshkian has announced that the reformist Mohamed Reza Aref will be his first vice-president.
In any case, Khamenei approves by law the ministers of Intelligence, Defense and Foreign Affairs, recalls Iranian journalist and analyst Fereshteh Sadeghi in X. For years, “the Minister of Interior has also been added to that list.”
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