Opinion: Iran's new president aims to change the country's image in the West, but Tehran's Islamist regime will remain the same no matter what face it takes
Iran’s newly elected President, Masoud Pezeshkian, is considered a “reformist” who may help change the world’s image of Iran. Pezeshkian defeated a more conservative candidate, Saeed Jalili, and now Iran wants to show the West a different face — more open and more friendly. The opportunity fell into the Iranians’ hands like ripe fruit, since Israel is facing a threat of international isolation and Iran can leverage that situation to alter its own image in the West.
Who is Masoud Pezeshkian?
Masoud Pezeshkian is a cardiac surgeon by profession, He is 69 years old and has held office in Iran as Minister of Health and as First Deputy Speaker of Parliament. After his medical studies in the city of Qasr-e Shirin, in the province of Kermanshah, he served in the Iran–Iraq war as a physician. Then he studied cardiac surgery at the Iran University of Medical Sciences in the city of Tabtiz and rose to become president of that university.
Pezeshkian began his political career in 1997, joining the government of Mohammad Khatami as Deputy Minister of Health. He was Minister of Health from 2001 to 2005. In 2013 he ran for president for the first time. He tried again in 2021 but his candidacy was disallowed. And in 2024 he was elected.
His mother’s ancestry was Kurdish and his father’s Azeri. He is fluent in Azeri, and his non-Persian heritage may have scored him points against his opponent, Saeed Jalili, among the many minority sectors of Iran and even with Ali Khamenei the Supreme Leader of Iran.
How would that be?
Iran is a fanatical state, and the West has increasingly viewed it that way. The hijab protests that swept the country in 2022 harmed Iran’s image even further and hardened the attitudes of the great powers who were already punishing Iran with heavy sanctions.
So Khameini came to understand that he needs to present a different face, to improve the dialogue, and to smile toward the West while Iran — protected by some kind of agreement with the great powers — quietly speeds toward nuclear weaponization. It is still the Supreme Leader, Ali Khaminei, who is setting the agenda. The “reformist” President is a mere spectacle.
Upon taking office, Pezeshkian spoke with the leaders of Iran’s proxies, including Ismail Haniyeh who was heading the political bureau of Hamas. He promised Haniyeh “Iran’s support for the Palestinian people, until Jerusalem is liberated.”
Iran’s closest proxy is Hezbollah, and Pezeshkian wrote to its Secretary General, Hassan Nasrallah: “The support for the resistance will continue forcefully… Iran was, and will remain, a supporter of all the resistance in the region against the Zionist entity… I am certain that the resistance movements of the region will not permit that entity to continue its crimes against the Palestinian nation.”
It appears that although the President is a new one, the Iranian policy stays unchanged. The only difference is in the tone that expresses it.
Unlike his predecessor Ebrahim Raisi, the “hangman of Tehran” whose unyielding attitude toward the West was the more terrifying for his violent past, Pezeshkian is a physician, a former university president, a man who studied administration in Switzerland, the UK, and the USA. A president like that is easier for the West to accept. And for that reason, the West should beware.
The President’s “reformist” label testifies that the Iranian military intends to exploit Israel’s diplomatic distress while Israel confronts a war, on several fronts, that Iran’s own proxies ignited. The opportunity is one that Khameini could never pass up.
A leader like Pezeshkian, by tipping a nod to the West, can win the Iranians many concessions, such as the cancelation of heavy economic sanctions. And Iran, which has never stopped exporting its Islamist revolution, can strengthen its proxies as revolutionaries and as fighters against Israel.
As Israel now wages a multi-front war and America’s reputation in the region suffers, Iran perceives a chance to intensify its efforts and attain its goals — but quietly and cagily, without drawing the West’s attention.
This is a golden opportunity for Khameini, and Pezeshkian as the new President has already hurried to call for a renewed nuclear agreement with the West in order to put an end to the economic sanctions against Iran.
One prompt hint that Iran’s “play-acting” for the West will not succeed has come from Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah of Iran. The Prince, whose father was overthrown by Khameini, Khomeini, and their allies in 1979, predicted that Khameini’s choice of Pezeshkian as President “will not extract this regime from its disputes and from its inevitable downfall.”
Calling Pezeshkian the “number one agent” of Khameini, Reza Pahlavi recognized that the show is being run by Khameini as Supreme Leader. Thus, behind the diplomatic window-dressing presented to the West, Iran stands more extremist than ever, and more determined to advance its regional agenda: nuclear capability, hegemony over the region, and the destruction of the State of Israel. That is the true face of Iran.
Eran Lahav is a researcher of terrorism specializing in global Jihad and Iranian proxies. He is the founder of the “Mabaterror” and a member of IDSF-Habithonistim - Israel's Defense and Security Forum.
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