Iran’s Presidential Election; Who is President Elect Masoud Pezeshkian?

Reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian could win Iran’s presidential election in the runoff round this Friday, defeating prominent conservative Saeed Jalili.

After two rounds of election on June 28 and July 5, reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian could defeat prominent conservative Saeed Jalili and become Iran’s ninth president. But who is this Masoud Pezeshkian?

Early life

Pezeshkian was born on September 29, 1954, in Mahabad in northwestern Iran to an Azeri father and a Kurdish mother. The 6-year-old politician is said to speak five languages including English, French, Arabic, Turkish, and Kurdish.

During the 1980s, when Pezeshkian was a medical student, he served in the Iran-Iraq war and was tasked with the deployment of medical teams to the front lines. After the war, he continued his education, specializing in general surgery at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences. In 1993, he received a subspecialty in cardiac surgery from Iran University of Medical Sciences. He later became a specialist in heart surgery.

In 1994, Pezeshkian became president of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, a position he held until 1999.

Pezeshkian and the world of politics

From 2001 to 2005, the cardiac surgeon served as Iran’s health minister under the administration of reformist President Mohammad Khatami.

In 2006, Pezeshkian was elected as a lawmaker representing Tabriz. He later served as a deputy parliament speaker and backed reformist and moderate causes, though analysts often described him more as an “independent” than allied with the voting blocs. That independent label also has been embraced by Pezeshkian in the campaign. Pezeshkian has also been a member of the Parliament of Iran and from 2016 to 2022, he served as the first Deputy Speaker of the Parliament.

Personal tragedy shaped Pezeshkian’s life when in 1994, a tragic car crash took the life of his wife, Fatemeh Majidi, and one of his daughters. The doctor never remarried and raised his remaining two sons and a daughter alone.

How would he act as president?

During his campaign, he pledged to promote a pragmatic foreign policy, ease tensions over now-stalled negotiations with major powers to revive a 2015 nuclear deal, and improve prospects for social liberalization and political pluralism. Pezeshkian has also vowed to revive the flagging economy, beset by mismanagement, state corruption, and U.S. sanctions.

In one of his latest remarks, he said “If I try but fail to fulfil my campaign promises, I would say goodbye to political work and not continue. There is no point in wasting our life and not being able to serve our dear people.”

Pezeshkian is known as a reformist with interest in negotiation with the West, especially the United States. However, he has said anti-US remarks on several occasions.

Pezeshkian, for example, repeatedly criticized the United States and praised Iran’s Revolutionary Guard for shooting down an American drone in 2019, saying it “delivered a strong punch in the mouth of the Americans and proved to them that our country will not surrender.” He also rebuked the declaration of IRGC as a terrorist organization by United States in 2019.