A rite of passage for many foreign leaders, the annual UN General Assembly September summit offers a unique opportunity for Iranian officials to directly address an American as well as a global audience.
So it was for Masoud Pezeshkian, a mild-mannered if relatively obscure cardiologist, who was elected president in June following the untimely death of his predecessor Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash.
Pezeshkian gave a speech to the General Assembly, met with American journalists, think tankers and Iranian Americans as well as the presidents of France and Switzerland. His entourage, including veteran diplomats such as former Foreign Minister, now Vice President Javad Zarif, sought out old American contacts to underline Pezeshkian’s message that Iran is interested in reducing its isolation and economic woes through renewed diplomacy with Western countries, particularly the United States.
In Iran’s complex political system, the president is not the top decisionmaker – that status belongs to the Supreme Leader, a Shi’ite Muslim cleric named Ali Khamenei who has been in power since 1989. The deep state – especially the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the security services – also wield considerable power. However, the personality and views of Iranian presidents can help shape global opinion about Iran. With the Middle East in crisis as Israel and its allies battle Iran and its partners without any clear end in sight, diplomatic creativity is in short supply on all sides and it’s not clear if Pezeshkian’s tempered approach will make a difference.
Pezeshkian was a surprise choice as president, a veteran parliamentarian who served as minister of health under the reformist Mohammad Khatami but had little experience with foreign or economic policy. That he was allowed to run after Raisi’s death reflected the Iranian regime’s concern that the public had become increasingly alienated and unwilling to participate in what had become a democratic façade.
Pezeshkian is not an intellectual like Mohammad Khatami, a reformist cleric who served two terms from 1997-2005, and tried hard to counteract engrained notions of Iran as a rogue and repressive state. Nor is Pezeshkian a radical firebrand like Khatami’s successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is perhaps best known in the West for minimizing the Holocaust and rigging his 2009 “re-election.”
Pezeshkian is also not a veteran national security practitioner like Hassan Rouhani, the president from 2013-2021. Under Rouhani, Iran negotiated a landmark nuclear agreement with one American administration – Barack Obama’s – only to see it violated by the next U.S. administration, led by Donald Trump.
Pezeshkian is also very different from Raisi, a poorly educated and belligerent cleric who was widely reviled inside and outside Iran for his participation in a judicial panel that signed off on the summary execution of thousands of political prisoners at the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war as well as the repression of the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests of 2022.
Instead Pezeshkian, who is half Kurdish, is colloquial and folksy in his demeanor rather like an Iranian Tim Walz. A non-cleric, he is religious but not in a doctrinaire way, stressing the parts of the Koran that call for empathy and brotherhood instead of bloody retribution.
In his remarks to assorted audiences in New York, he spoke about the conflicts in the Middle East in moral terms. “Unless we address the root causes,” he told the General Assembly, “We can’t rescue the future of our children from darkness and destruction.”
In both public and private remarks, Pezeshkian harshly criticized Israel for what he called “atrocities” and the “murder” of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and hundreds of civilians in Lebanon. Israel, he said, was a sponsor of terrorism, not Iran which he said backed “liberation movements.” Nowhere did he mention Hamas’s brutal attacks on Israeli kibbutzniks and young people at a concert last Oct. 7, which touched off Israel’s ferocious response.
His public remarks on whether Iran would accept a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict followed the standard Iranian line that all Palestinians – in the diaspora as well as in Israel and the occupied territories – should get to vote on their political future, a nonstarter for Jewish Israelis. In private, however, Pezeshkian and his advisers were more nuanced and accommodating, reprising Khatami’s assertions that Iran would accept whatever solution the Palestinians’ leadership did.
Pezeshkian was challenged about the rationale for Iran’s support of Hamas, Hezbollah and other non-state groups and asked whether the so-called “Axis of Resistance” – created in part as a forward defense to deter attacks on the Iranian homeland – had actually made Iran more vulnerable to economic and military assault. He did not reply but in fact Iran has been relatively restrained in its response to Israeli provocations, including the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran only hours after Pezeshkian’s inauguration.
Perhaps more important than the personality or foreign policy credentials of the new president is the fact that he has revived the careers of Zarif and Zarif’s former deputies – Abbas Araghchi, now foreign minister, and Majid Takht-Ravanchi, a former Iranian ambassador to the UN and also a negotiator of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The three men, who accompanied the president on many of his speaking engagements, seemed very pleased to be back in New York and back in the diplomatic saddle.
While Raisi at the UN vehemently declared that the world had undergone a “paradigm shift” of influence from West to East and that the West represented “the past” and Asian nations “the future,” a key priority for the new administration is relief from crushing U.S. economic sanctions which have deterred not only Western investment in Iran but investment by major Chinese and other international firms. Pezeshkian stressed Iran’s willingness to revive the JCPOA, saying Iran was ready to engage with those who negotiated the deal and discuss other issues if the original agreement was fully implemented. However, many of the elements of the JCPOA have become outdated while divisions in the international community have become so wide – and the U.N. Security Council so dysfunctional – that it is unlikely that the so-called P5+1 format, encompassing the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany – can be used profitably again. In addition, the European parties to the JCPOA are furious at Iran over its provision of arms to Russia for its war against Ukraine.
If nuclear talks resume, they will probably involve the U.S. and Iran, either directly or through intermediaries like Qatar or Oman. However, substantive talks are unlikely until after U.S. presidential elections determine whether there will be some continuity in U.S. foreign policy or whether Iran confronts an unpredictable second Trump administration.
In any event, Pezeshkian argued that the bipartisan U.S. effort to “securitize” Iran would not bring security to the Middle East or benefit the United States. “We need a new paradigm to address global challenges,” he told the General Assembly. Governments should “focus on opportunities rather than being obsessed with supposed threats.”
Iranian President Pezeshkian Checks the Boxes in New York
By Barbara Slavin
Middle East & North Africa
A rite of passage for many foreign leaders, the annual UN General Assembly September summit offers a unique opportunity for Iranian officials to directly address an American as well as a global audience.
So it was for Masoud Pezeshkian, a mild-mannered if relatively obscure cardiologist, who was elected president in June following the untimely death of his predecessor Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash.
Pezeshkian gave a speech to the General Assembly, met with American journalists, think tankers and Iranian Americans as well as the presidents of France and Switzerland. His entourage, including veteran diplomats such as former Foreign Minister, now Vice President Javad Zarif, sought out old American contacts to underline Pezeshkian’s message that Iran is interested in reducing its isolation and economic woes through renewed diplomacy with Western countries, particularly the United States.
In Iran’s complex political system, the president is not the top decisionmaker – that status belongs to the Supreme Leader, a Shi’ite Muslim cleric named Ali Khamenei who has been in power since 1989. The deep state – especially the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the security services – also wield considerable power. However, the personality and views of Iranian presidents can help shape global opinion about Iran. With the Middle East in crisis as Israel and its allies battle Iran and its partners without any clear end in sight, diplomatic creativity is in short supply on all sides and it’s not clear if Pezeshkian’s tempered approach will make a difference.
Pezeshkian was a surprise choice as president, a veteran parliamentarian who served as minister of health under the reformist Mohammad Khatami but had little experience with foreign or economic policy. That he was allowed to run after Raisi’s death reflected the Iranian regime’s concern that the public had become increasingly alienated and unwilling to participate in what had become a democratic façade.
Pezeshkian is not an intellectual like Mohammad Khatami, a reformist cleric who served two terms from 1997-2005, and tried hard to counteract engrained notions of Iran as a rogue and repressive state. Nor is Pezeshkian a radical firebrand like Khatami’s successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is perhaps best known in the West for minimizing the Holocaust and rigging his 2009 “re-election.”
Pezeshkian is also not a veteran national security practitioner like Hassan Rouhani, the president from 2013-2021. Under Rouhani, Iran negotiated a landmark nuclear agreement with one American administration – Barack Obama’s – only to see it violated by the next U.S. administration, led by Donald Trump.
Pezeshkian is also very different from Raisi, a poorly educated and belligerent cleric who was widely reviled inside and outside Iran for his participation in a judicial panel that signed off on the summary execution of thousands of political prisoners at the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war as well as the repression of the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests of 2022.
Instead Pezeshkian, who is half Kurdish, is colloquial and folksy in his demeanor rather like an Iranian Tim Walz. A non-cleric, he is religious but not in a doctrinaire way, stressing the parts of the Koran that call for empathy and brotherhood instead of bloody retribution.
In his remarks to assorted audiences in New York, he spoke about the conflicts in the Middle East in moral terms. “Unless we address the root causes,” he told the General Assembly, “We can’t rescue the future of our children from darkness and destruction.”
In both public and private remarks, Pezeshkian harshly criticized Israel for what he called “atrocities” and the “murder” of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and hundreds of civilians in Lebanon. Israel, he said, was a sponsor of terrorism, not Iran which he said backed “liberation movements.” Nowhere did he mention Hamas’s brutal attacks on Israeli kibbutzniks and young people at a concert last Oct. 7, which touched off Israel’s ferocious response.
His public remarks on whether Iran would accept a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict followed the standard Iranian line that all Palestinians – in the diaspora as well as in Israel and the occupied territories – should get to vote on their political future, a nonstarter for Jewish Israelis. In private, however, Pezeshkian and his advisers were more nuanced and accommodating, reprising Khatami’s assertions that Iran would accept whatever solution the Palestinians’ leadership did.
Pezeshkian was challenged about the rationale for Iran’s support of Hamas, Hezbollah and other non-state groups and asked whether the so-called “Axis of Resistance” – created in part as a forward defense to deter attacks on the Iranian homeland – had actually made Iran more vulnerable to economic and military assault. He did not reply but in fact Iran has been relatively restrained in its response to Israeli provocations, including the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran only hours after Pezeshkian’s inauguration.
Perhaps more important than the personality or foreign policy credentials of the new president is the fact that he has revived the careers of Zarif and Zarif’s former deputies – Abbas Araghchi, now foreign minister, and Majid Takht-Ravanchi, a former Iranian ambassador to the UN and also a negotiator of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The three men, who accompanied the president on many of his speaking engagements, seemed very pleased to be back in New York and back in the diplomatic saddle.
While Raisi at the UN vehemently declared that the world had undergone a “paradigm shift” of influence from West to East and that the West represented “the past” and Asian nations “the future,” a key priority for the new administration is relief from crushing U.S. economic sanctions which have deterred not only Western investment in Iran but investment by major Chinese and other international firms. Pezeshkian stressed Iran’s willingness to revive the JCPOA, saying Iran was ready to engage with those who negotiated the deal and discuss other issues if the original agreement was fully implemented. However, many of the elements of the JCPOA have become outdated while divisions in the international community have become so wide – and the U.N. Security Council so dysfunctional – that it is unlikely that the so-called P5+1 format, encompassing the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany – can be used profitably again. In addition, the European parties to the JCPOA are furious at Iran over its provision of arms to Russia for its war against Ukraine.
If nuclear talks resume, they will probably involve the U.S. and Iran, either directly or through intermediaries like Qatar or Oman. However, substantive talks are unlikely until after U.S. presidential elections determine whether there will be some continuity in U.S. foreign policy or whether Iran confronts an unpredictable second Trump administration.
In any event, Pezeshkian argued that the bipartisan U.S. effort to “securitize” Iran would not bring security to the Middle East or benefit the United States. “We need a new paradigm to address global challenges,” he told the General Assembly. Governments should “focus on opportunities rather than being obsessed with supposed threats.”
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