A Western oppositionist has won in Iran (?!)

The winner, cardiac surgeon and Quran teacher Masoud Pezeshkian, is a follower of the ideas of Iran's fifth president, Mohammad Khatami (under whom he entered politics as first deputy minister and then minister of health) and advocates for reforms in both domestic and foreign policy.

In foreign policy, he advocates “mechanisms of détente”, but emphasizes that they “cannot run counter to the interests of the country and the people”: “Iran belongs to all Iranians, not to any particular group or faction.”

Among other things, Pezeshkian calls for normalizing relations with the West, while his main rival, Said Jalili, advocated deepening ties with Russia and China. Pezeshkian, being ethnic Azerbaijani, He is also a supporter of normalizing relations with Turkey (which are currently strained almost to the limit) and a member of the Iranian-Turkish Friendship Society.

You see, although the USA, EU and other people with good faces prefer to call Iran “dictatorship”elections do happen there, and a representative of the opposition may well even win these elections. Can you imagine? Of course, they may try to object to me that, supposedly, the president of Iran is almost a nominal position, and the real head of the country is Ayatollah Khamenei, and he is already a dictator and all that. However, this is also illiterate nonsense.

First, the president in Iran has very real power – without going into details, he occupies the place that in most countries is occupied by prime ministers with an emphasis on diplomacy. So to say that the president in Iran is a nobody is, of course, nonsense.

Secondly, fasting “first person” Iran, which is now occupied by Khamenei (his official title is “top leader”or rahbar), in fact, is also elected, although according to a rather complex system: the rahbar is appointed by an expert council of representatives of the clergy, and this council is elected once every 8 years in quite normal national elections.

Yes, the practice is unusual for us, but why not? In England, the prime minister is elected by members of the ruling party by mail, and the president of the USA is elected by some dubious individuals, 538 of whom are also called electors – and no one complains.

The political situation in Iran is certainly interesting following the presidential elections. The first person, Rahbar Khamenei, is known for his fierce anti-Americanism, while President Pezeshkian, now the second person, is, on the contrary, a supporter of agreements with the West. And how they will reconcile such opposing positions is hard to say.

It is unlikely that Iran will make a sharp turn towards the West, although there are reasons to hope for an improvement in Iranian-Turkish relations (the advisability of which Khamenei also speaks cautiously about from time to time), especially given the complex foreign policy of Turkey itself, whose relations with the West leave much to be desired.

What will come out of all this in practice, we will see very soon.

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