Iran’s new president rekindles faint hopes of rapprochement with west

Iran’s new president has been formally inaugurated by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, opening up the slim hope of improved relations with the west, less internal censorship and a fresh approach to the economy.

In a ceremony on Sunday marking the start of his four-year presidency, Masoud Pezeshkian said the Iranian people had voted for change and promised constructive engagement with the west, a step he regards as a precondition for Tehran curbing inflation and securing growth.

Elected in a runoff on 5 July on a turnout of 49.7%, Pezeshkian, a reformist, is expected to make a raft of cabinet appointments in the next few days, including a new foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi. In his first official act in office, Pezeshkian appointed Mohammad Reza Aref, 72, a reformist and close ally of the former president, as his first vice-president.

At the inauguration ceremony in Tehran attended by diplomats and Iran’s political elite, Khamenei, the man that sets the parameters of Iranian policy, said it would be a foreign policy priority to remain close to countries that had supported Iran during the period of sanctions. But he said he did not rule out closer relations with European powers if they modified their behaviour.

Khamenei, broadly an advocate of looking to the east for Iran’s partners, said many European powers had been “behaving badly to us” through the imposition of oil sales embargos and by launching fake attacks on human rights. He praised Pezeshkian as a deserving president, saying he was “wise, popular, honest and scholarly”.

Pezeshkian, a medical surgeon, parliamentarian and briefly a health minister, has no intention of differing with Khamenei in public, knowing the supreme Leader is ideologically closer to conservatives such as Pezeshkian’s predecessor as president, Ebrahim Raisi.

Raisi’s death in a helicopter accident in May upended Iranian politics, but it remains unclear how far Pezeshkian will go in challenging some of the suppressive norms of Iranian society. He also faces a rightwing parliament that will be quick to pounce on his mistakes, and as a result is making every effort to emphasise political unity.

In two encouraging signs, the former reformist president Mohammad Khatami met with Pezeshkian to discuss appointments and the dissident Majid Tavakoli was released from jail pending a retrial after his six-year sentence. On the other hand, the revolutionary court has just issued a death sentence against Pakhshan Azizi, a Kurdish political prisoner held in Tehran’s Evin Prison.

The internal and external pressures facing the new government were well illustrated on Sunday. The climate crisis, and lack of internal electricity generation capacity, was underscored when government offices and banks closed due to extreme heat . Temperatures have soared over 40 degrees in many cities.

Externally the Iranian foreign ministry warned Israel not to launch a war against the Lebanese-based militia Hezbollah after a deadly strike on a town in the occupied Golan Heights. Hezbollah denies it launched the attack, which killed 11 young people.

Pezeshkian sent a letter to the Hezbollah secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, pledging further help.

Yet Pezeshkian, in the brief election campaign, also insisted Iran could not hope to achieve the economic growth it desired without obtaining relief from US sanctions and getting off the blacklist of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global watchdog against terrorism financing and money laundering. Ties with Russia and China could not make up for the impact of sanctions, he argued.

That means Iran will have to reopen diplomacy with the west over its nuclear programme, after negotiations have been stalled for more than a year.

The tension between those that argue Iran can best maintain independence by resisting western sanctions and others who insist they enchain Iran will be one of the main controversies of the new presidency.

Ellie Geranmayeh, Middle East specialist at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the election required a western response. She said Germany, France and the UK “should coordinate with Washington and their Arab allies to create viable pathways to concrete economic relief – but only if Iran is prepared to immediately roll back its nuclear programme”.