Iran’s President-elect Masoud Pezeshkian walked through a leafy cemetery and sat next to a tombstone bearing his wife’s name. Moments later he was in a car, crying.
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The scenes were captured in a campaign video addressed to his wife, Fatemeh. “I miss you more than ever,” says the narrator, speaking on behalf of Pezeshkian, “I wish you were here with me in these days when I made this difficult promise.”
The public declaration of love is an anomaly among Iranian politicians. But Pezeshkian, a 69-year-old heart surgeon who won election as a reformist, looks and sounds unconventional.
He has painted himself as a modern leader for a new era in Iran, a religious man who considered his wife an equal partner when she was still alive — and, like him, practiced medicine — and who was a devout widower after her death in a car accident. He raised three children and never remarried.
“He promised that just as he stood by his family in his mother’s absence, he would stand by the Iranian people,” said Ali Vaez, Iran director of the International Crisis Group.
Pezeshkian has said he wants to lead Iran to become more prosperous, more socially open and more engaged with the West. In a recent op-ed published in The Tehran Times, he described his foreign policy as “opportunity-driven,” strengthening ties with allies Russia and China but open to cooperating with the European Union. He said Iran would not “respond to pressure” from the United States.
Whether Pezeshkian will be able to pull it off remains to be seen. But he has a chance, because Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has backed him and instructed his subordinates to work with the new president.
Pezeshkian has tried to appear not as a disruptor but as a more pragmatic problem solver, saying in debates that he would obey Khamenei.
Analysts say he will have to negotiate with Khamenei if he is to fulfil his promises, such as halting the mandatory hijab for women, lifting internet restrictions and working with the US in an attempt to lift sanctions.
Just a few months ago, the prospect of a reformist government in Iran seemed fantastic. Then, in May, Ebrahim Raisi, the conservative cleric who was president, was killed in a helicopter crash.
And here is Pezeshkian, a doctor, professor, former health minister and lawmaker who has chaired a major medical university and research center. He speaks Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic and English, and trained in health care leadership at Harvard University, which, according to his friends, had softened his view of the United States.
Although Pezeshkian is not a member of any political party, his rise has come alongside that of the reformist party.
Colleagues and friends described him as outspoken, honest and driven by social justice. They said he has always been loyal to the Islamic Republic’s theocracy even though he has criticized its corruption and policies that have undermined Iran’s living standards.
Ali-Akbar Mousavi Khoeini, a former reformist lawmaker now living in exile in the U.S., said he was known for preferring mediation over confrontation. But Khoeini predicted that as president, “clashes will begin when he tries to implement his ideas.”
Some government critics said Pezeshkian was not a reformer.
“I don’t have much hope. The reformers, even at the height of their power, were not able to implement any deep and lasting changes regarding women’s rights, let alone now in this climate of oppression,” said Aliyeh Motallebzadeh, a women’s rights activist who has been imprisoned.
Pezeshkian has had his own run-ins with the system. In 2003, parliament tried to oust him as health minister over fees for medical services and the opaque pharmaceutical market.
He was twice disqualified from running for president and parliament by the Guardian Council, a body of clerics and jurists that vets candidates. Khamenei intervened last winter and resurrected his candidacy, said Abbas Abdi, a political analyst who served on Pezeshkian’s election advisory committee.
“The system reached a dead end and realized it needed to change course to avoid imploding,” Abdi said.
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