{"id":87781,"date":"2024-07-10T11:30:56","date_gmt":"2024-07-10T01:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=87781"},"modified":"2024-07-10T12:18:17","modified_gmt":"2024-07-10T02:18:17","slug":"the-global-implications-of-irans-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-global-implications-of-irans-election\/","title":{"rendered":"The global implications of Iran\u2019s election"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The second round of Iran\u2019s presidential election unfolded with little fanfare last weekend. But, with reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian defeating<\/a> his hardline anti-Western opponent, Saeed Jalili, the world should be paying attention. At a time of deep tensions and shifting alliances, these results will reverberate across the region and beyond.<\/p>\n

The election\u2019s backdrop was messy, to say the least. The death of Iran\u2019s last president, the hardline Ebrahim Raisi, in a helicopter crash<\/a> in May, together with the lack of any obvious successor, exacerbated deep internal fissures in a country already shaken by popular protests. Bowing to intense public pressure, Iran\u2019s Guardian Council<\/a> permitted the moderate Pezeshkian to run, despite attempts by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to undermine Pezeshkian\u2019s candidacy. Iranians had mostly boycotted<\/a> the first round. Whether out of anger, apathy, or resignation, fewer than 50 percent<\/a> showed up for the run-off.<\/p>\n

The regional landscape is similarly muddled. Iran\u2019s foreign policy is shaped by conflicting impulses. On one hand, Iran\u2019s leaders desire a semblance of regional stability, both to ease the political transition and to help the country cope with crippling Western sanctions. On the other hand, Iran remains committed to the so-called Axis of Resistance<\/a>, a loose network of opportunistic actors\u2014including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas in Gaza\u2014dedicated to eliminating Israel, expelling the United States from the Middle East and upending the US-led world order.<\/p>\n

This tension was apparent in the careful dance<\/a> that Iran, Hezbollah, and Israel were engaged in for months following the launch of Israel\u2019s invasion of Gaza. But Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu\u2019s announcement<\/a> last month that he planned to scale down operations in Gaza and redeploy troops toward the Lebanese border has tilted the scales toward conflict, as evidenced by a surge in rocket attacks<\/a> on Israel.<\/p>\n

The Middle East has never been a paragon of stability. But it did, until recently, appear to be progressing towards a somewhat more stable status quo. Under the Abraham Accords (led by the White House in 2020), Israel normalised ties<\/a> with some Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. This helped to convince the United States that it could afford to shift its focus away from the Middle East to other foreign-policy priorities, especially containment of China and then, since 2022, supporting Ukraine\u2019s defense against Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion. But Israel\u2019s war on Hamas upended the incipient new status quo, fueling clashes across the region.<\/p>\n

Last year, Iran also restored diplomatic relations with several Arab states, beginning with Saudi Arabia. This detente, however, was brokered by China<\/a>, which has maintained strong ties with Iran ever since. Iran\u2019s oil sales to China are now generating $150 million per day<\/a> for the Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n

Iran maintains similarly close ties<\/a> with Russia, which shares its goal of countering Western global dominance. Beyond openly supporting Russia in its war against Ukraine, Iran is helping Russia evade<\/a> Western sanctions, especially in hydrocarbon and financial transactions. After Raisi\u2019s death, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared<\/a>, in a condolence letter to Khamenei, that he would \u2018forever remember\u2019 Raisi as \u2018the most wonderful person\u2019.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Iran has been taking advantage of the international community\u2019s preoccupation with Ukraine, Gaza and electoral dramas in Europe and Washington to advance its nuclear program<\/a>. Though it does not seem to be developing nuclear weapons for now, it has already acquired<\/a> many of the capabilities it needs for doing so, and the risk of proliferation is acute. If the Axis of Resistance has enabled Iran to project power with some measure of impunity, nuclear weapons would allow it to pose a credible threat to the existing world order.<\/p>\n

The presidential election may have helped to mitigate this risk\u2014to a point. Pezeshkian has advocated a more balanced foreign policy and a revival of nuclear diplomacy. This stance has won him the support<\/a> of former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who led negotiations for the now-defunct 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which placed significant limits on Iran\u2019s nuclear program.<\/p>\n

But not even Pezeshkian is likely to assume the political risk of pursuing any kind of rapprochement<\/a> with the United States, especially given the increasingly salient prospect that Donald Trump, who abandoned<\/a> the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, will soon return to the White House. The chances of Iran\u2019s new president attempting to forge a new nuclear deal with the international community are practically nonexistent.<\/p>\n

For now, Iran might decide to remain a permanent nuclear-threshold state, threatening to arm itself at any provocation. But it could soon decide to make good on that threat and build a nuclear-weapons arsenal. The risk of a wider war in the Middle East\u2014triggered, for example, by Israel\u2014is also rising. In attempting to navigate these risky dynamics, the West must engage in new and creative thinking, rather than sticking to the same old strategies. Time is on the mullahs\u2019 side.<\/p>\n

Pezeshkian\u2019s win might not spell the end of the Axis of Resistance or its efforts to topple the Western-led world order, not least because the president\u2019s ability to shape Iran\u2019s foreign policy is limited. But it could provide an opening to erode the grouping\u2019s cohesion. The problem is that taking advantage of that opening will require a coherent approach, which the West is poorly positioned to devise at the moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The second round of Iran\u2019s presidential election unfolded with little fanfare last weekend. But, with reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian defeating his hardline anti-Western opponent, Saeed Jalili, the world should be paying attention. At a time …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1658,"featured_media":87782,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2015,247,240,218,356],"class_list":["post-87781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-domestic-politics","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-nuclear-weapons"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe global implications of Iran\u2019s election | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-global-implications-of-irans-election\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The global implications of Iran\u2019s election | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The second round of Iran\u2019s presidential election unfolded with little fanfare last weekend. 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