Reformist Masoud Pezeshkian is Inaugurated as Iran’s New President

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• Reformist Masoud Pezeshkian is Inaugurated as Iran’s New President

  He is an ostensible moderate. The Iranian regime, the Revolutionary Guards and the clerical establishment choose a slate of candidates who can run for president. So all of them were deemed to be acceptable. But he was viewed as the most moderate amongst them. So it is interesting that the Iranian public, given a choice, moved as far to the moderate camp as they could in electing him.

  I think he's going to see if he can test the margins on the things he talked about in the election, which, as I said, is gender and human rights, and human rights writ large. I mean, greater, greater, oxygen for the Iranian people in terms of free speech and freedom to just go about their lives.

  But as we all know from the studies of revolutions that lose their fervor and become totalitarian regimes, the more they are tempted to give up and grant rights and freedoms to people, the more at risk they are that the popular opinion will be expressed against them.

  I don't think there'll be much change with his presidency. But the biggest possible area, the area to watch is what happens on gender rights.

  The Iranian women have clearly spoken, as have many men, about the intolerance, how intolerable it is, the measures and restrictions under which they have to to suffer and so I think this is an area that the regime may give the new president some maneuvering room. If you look at Saudi Arabia, the crown prince there has opened up to some degree, given a ray of hope to women there.

  And so it's possible to do it even in an authoritarian Islamic country.

  As far as Iran's foreign policy and the status of the nuclear deal, I don't think that the new president's going to have much involvement in that. Historically that's been the case with his predecessors, even the more hardline ones.

  That's really the brief of the spiritual leader and the security services.