From nuclear tensions to Gaza War, Iran’s new president will navigate a world on the edge

The incoming President of Iran will have the unenviable task of steering the Islamic Republic through one of its most turbulent times regionally and globally.

Domestically, too, he will have a tumultuous start. More than a year after the monthslong uprising following the death of a 22-year-old woman shook the country, he will inherit an insecure state that’s in the midst of a renewed crackdown on women’s freedoms to preserve the values of the Islamic Revolution. The state remains on its toes for signs of dissent to check any brewing movement.

While the writ of the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is the last word on all affairs, it is up to the presidency to implement the writ.

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As Iranians cast their ballots on Friday, the Middle East was ablaze with the Israel-Hamas War in the Gaza Strip and the belligerence of the Houthis in the Red Sea. Yet another war appears to be on the verge of breaking out in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah. All of these groups —along with others like Shia militias in Iraq and Syria and the Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)— are sponsored by Iran and thus the regime remains central to regional conflicts.

At the same time, Iran is closer than ever to developing a nuclear weapon. It is effectively a ‘threshold state’ at the moment and the only thing between Iran and the bomb is the go-ahead from Khamenei. Israel and the United States are anxious about the nuclear programme and remain committed to stopping the bomb’s development. Israel considers it an existential threat and remains open to military action.

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The term of the new Iranian president will therefore be on the edge from the onset.

Is there going to be change or continuity in Iran?

Of the six presidential candidates, five are hardliners and only one is a moderate.

Of the five hardliners, three are from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and a fourth is from an intelligence background.

The IRGC is an armed force in Iran that’s separate from the regular military. It is the personal sword-arm of the Supreme Leader and is committed to preserving the Islamic Revolution of 1979 domestically and exporting it externally. The Quds Force of the IRGC is the foreign intelligence and covert operations wing of the IRGC that steers Iran-sponsored schemes in the region.

While there will not be a policy shift under the new Iranian president as the broad contours are set by the Supreme Leader, the president and his ministers will have the crucial executive role and a lot depends on the manner of the implementation, says Deepika Saraswat, a scholar of Iran at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA).

This means that while the broad policy may remain the same, if the sole reformist candidate Massoud Pezeshkian wins, then Iran may indeed be a bit different. Saraswat says Iran’s international relations may also see a difference given the reformists and moderates have pursued constructive engagement with the world, including the West.

Saraswat further says that Pezeshkian’s campaign has focused on rights of women, Iran’s ethnic minorities, border areas, fostering greater unity in the country. This means while there may not be a substantial shift on mandatory hijab rules, there may be renewal of a reformist agenda of incremental reforms in social and cultural issues.

“The Iranian president can channel the aspirations and demands of the people. Pezeshkian, like any president, can be a vehicle for advancing those aspirations. In the past, reformist and moderate presidents have acted as pressure groups to negotiate with the more conservative establishment,” says Saraswat, the author of the book Between Survival and Status: The Counter-Hegemonic Geopolitics of Iran.

Is Supreme Leader looking at domestic consolidation?

In Iran, the candidature for the presidency is approved by the Guardian Council, a body of Islamic clerics and jurists under the Supreme Leader.

While Pezeshkian was cleared as a candidate, the five others were from the conservative camps. A relatively diverse pool of candidates brings some democratic competition, possibly generating participation from the reformist constituency and undecided voters. A higher turnout boosts the legitimacy of the system, says Saraswat, an Associate Fellow at the West Asia Center at the MP-IDSA.

Seeking such a domestic consolidation makes sense at a time when Iran has so many fronts opened. The recent episode of exchange of barrages with Israel could have also had a rally around the flag effect.

“Many Iranians question their country’s involvement in the conflict in Gaza but at the same time when Iran is under attack by Israel or the United States, it is bound to rally people around the flag. The conservatives especially have argued for hard security, a ‘strong Iran’ that has strategic depth across the region,” says Saraswat.

Iran’s negotiations with the world

Just a day before Iranians went to polls, the United States imposed fresh sanctions on Iran.

This is part of the long-running conflict between the two sides where the West has sought to punish Iran with sanctions over its nuclear programme and interventions in the Middle East. While sanctions may primarily appear to be punitive measures, they are also negotiating tools as the prospect of lifting these sanctions is used by the West to pursue Iran to make concessions on its activities that the West finds unacceptable.

This was how the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) —the Iran Nuclear Deal of 2015— was signed. It capped Iran’s nuclear enrichment in lieu of lifting sanctions. Former US President Donald Trump, however, quit the treaty and Iran followed suit. He mounted what’s called the ‘maximum pressure’ strategy against Iran — reinstating sanctions to the fullest.

Years later, Iran is now closer to the bomb than ever and the failure of Trump’s maximum pressure strategy is for all to see. Saraswat of the MP-IDSA says sanctions alone don’t work on Iran and the West needs to rework its approach.

“The maximum pressure strategy failed spectacularly. The Iran Nuclear Deal was not perfect. It was a compromise as it could not secure the dismantling of the Iranian nuclear programme the way the United States and Israel would have wanted. But it capped nuclear enrichment, allowed for monitoring of the nuclear programme, and prevented the development of the bomb. After Trump exited the deal, Iran ramped up the enrichment. Now, Iran retaliates to sanctions with more enrichment,” says Saraswat.

At the current levels of enrichment, it could take anywhere between weeks to a few months for Iran to make weapons-grade uranium once the go-ahead comes from the Supreme Leader. Then, the warhead may be ready in many more months — one estimate says the entire process could take a year and a half. But developing the weapon may not be the goal of Iran and it may instead be looking at its ‘threshold state’ as a bargaining chip.

Saraswat says, “The nuclear threshold status is increasingly seen as part of Iran’s deterrence strategy, especially after the Iranian-Israeli exchange of fire in April. Given Iran does not want a full-blown war with the United States, and acquiring nuclear weapons will be crossing a big red line for the United States and Israel, so it has not made the political decision of acquiring the bomb despite the evident technological capabilities.”

To communicate this convincingly —if this is indeed the case— to the concerned parties would be a challenge for the incoming government and the West too would need to find new responses and better ways to engage with Iran. The sanctions have clearly not worked and the 2015 deal is dead. They would be watching for signals from the new president to gauge his intentions and chalk out a response.