2024-07-06 12:10:06
Supporting the restoration of JCPOA to ‘resolve economic difficulties’… “It will eliminate poverty, war, and corruption”
Iran’s presidential election winner, Masoud Pezekian, is a reformist who supports the nuclear deal with the United States. There are expectations that he will pursue socio-economic reforms when he takes power, but conservative opposition is also expected to be considerable.
According to Mehr News Agency and Press TV, candidate Pezeshkian won the Iranian presidential election runoff held the day before with 16,384,403 votes according to the vote count on the 6th (local time), beating his rival Saeed Jalili (13,538,179 votes) by over 2.8 million votes.
President-elect Pezeshkian is a cardiologist by training. After studying medicine, he was known to have been frequently deployed to the front lines as part of a medical team during the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 to 1988. He served as Minister of Health and Medical Services from 2001 to 2005 during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami.
Born on September 29, 1954 in Mahabad, West Azerbaijan, Iran, he is the son of an Iranian-Azerbaijani father and an Iranian-Kurdish mother. He is classified as a minority in terms of birth. It seems that he gained support from minorities.
In 1993, she lost her spouse and one child in a car accident, and instead of remarrying, she raised her two remaining sons and one daughter alone. She attempted to run for president in 2013 and 2021, but she gave up halfway through or failed to pass the candidate screening, and thus failed to achieve her goal.
With his election as the only reformist candidate following the sudden death of President Ebrahim Raisi, Iran will once again have a reformist government after three years since President Hassan Rouhani stepped down in 2021. Attention is being paid to whether this will bring changes to Iran’s internal and foreign policies.
In this regard, he supports the restoration of the collapsed Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). In a TV debate last month, he declared, “(If elected) my foreign policy goal is to normalize relations with the world,” and “I support the implementation of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the JCPOA.”
The reason he supports the restoration of the JCPOA is because of the economic hardship caused by Western sanctions. He also pledged that “poverty, discrimination, war, lies and corruption will disappear from this country,” and expressed his ambition to eliminate the gap between the ordinary Iranian people and the government.
Regarding women’s issues, she has stated her position that “the view that women are second-class citizens and were created solely for the purpose of family must change.” Regarding women’s clothing obligations, such as the hijab, she agrees with the dress code itself, but she believes that the method of enforcing the law must change.
However, it is uncertain how much reform he can actually push forward. Some point out that although he was the only reformist candidate in this election, he was just a ‘show’. Before this presidential election, he was close to being an unknown politician.
The Washington Post (WP) predicted that “Once in office, Iran’s conservatives could thwart the plans Pezekian proposed during the election campaign.” It also predicted that his power could be weak, given that the turnout in this runoff election was not very high.
In this regard, it was reported that the turnout rate for the Iranian presidential election runoff was over 50% in the early count. However, Press TV later reported that the turnout rate was 49.8%. WP reported that “Iran’s clerical rulers see high turnout as the key to legitimacy.”
In the case of restoring the JCPOA, there is also uncertainty due to the US presidential election. Iran signed the JCPOA with the US, China, France, Russia, the UK, and Germany in 2015, during the time of former President Hassan Rouhani, who was also a reformist. At that time, the US was under the administration of President Barack Obama.
However, former President Donald Trump, who took office in 2017, declared withdrawal from the JCPOA the following year and restored a large number of sanctions against Iran, which led to a breakdown in relations with the West. The United States is currently under the administration of President Joe Biden, but he is surrounded by talk of resignation ahead of the November presidential election.
If former President Trump wins the November election and regains power, President Pezeshkian’s stance to restore the JCPOA is unlikely to gain much traction.
[서울=뉴시스]
2024-07-06 12:10:06