AnalysisNew president pens carefully worded English-language article

Pezeshkian courts EU, rules out nukes, but flirts with leaving non-proliferation pact

Iran’s president, the regime’s new ‘reformist’ face, accuses ‘US and its Western allies’ of undermining NPT through sanctions, cites ‘harmful consequences’ of killing Soleimani

Iran's new President Masoud Pezeshkian attends a mourning ceremony commemorating the 7th-century martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, Hussein, in Tehran, July 12, 2024. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
Iran's new President Masoud Pezeshkian attends a mourning ceremony commemorating the 7th-century martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson, Hussein, in Tehran, July 12, 2024. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

A week after he was elected president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, the so-called reformist candidate, set out his foreign policy doctrine for the world to see. The selected platform: the front page of the English-language “Tehran Times.”

It was clear that Pezeshkian’s piece, published Friday, had undergone careful editing. He walked a fine line, apparently trying to please everyone, including the West. Rather than an antagonist, he sought to cast himself as a pragmatist — an Iranian patriot intent on preserving the interests of the state now entrusted to him.

Still, in addressing neighboring Muslim countries with a call for cooperation based on “common Islamic values,” Pezeshkian avoided naming Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. This was for good reason: Despite the delay in Saudi-Israeli normalization, the countries’ military agreements with Israel were put into action for the first time on April 14 — against Iran.

Overall, Pezeshian used general language to send a clear message:

“Our region has been plagued for too long by war, sectarian conflicts, terrorism and extremism… and foreign interference. It is time to tackle these common challenges… We must unite and rely on the power of logic rather than the logic of power,” wrote the new president, who sits firmly beneath Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the regime’s hierarchy.

Iran’s relative reformists have always used sweet talk to try to ease tensions.

Masoud Pezeshkian, center, flashes a victory sign after casting his vote in Iran’s presidential election as he is accompanied by former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, left, at a polling station in Shahr-e-Qods near Tehran, Iran, July 5, 2024. (AP/Vahid Salemi)

On Iran’s ties with Europe, Pezeshkian seems to have set his sights on Germany, France and Italy — the European Union’s “big three” — and he appeared to try to drive a wedge between them and the United States with regard to the regime’s nuclear program.

On the one hand, Pezeshkian accused Europe of reneging on its pledge to preserve economic ties with Iran after Washington in 2018 withdrew from the agreement on Tehran’s nuclear program. On the other hand, he said now was the time to renew dialogue on the basis of respect for the rights of the Iranian people.

“There are numerous areas of cooperation that Iran and Europe can explore once European powers come to terms with this reality and set aside self-arrogated moral supremacy coupled with manufactured crises that have plagued our relations for so long,” wrote Pezeshkian.

Pezeshkian’s tone toward the US was much more sharp and confrontational — at times almost threatening. The newly elected president chose to point out that Iran is a signatory to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which Israel never joined.

Iran’s domestically built centrifuges are displayed in an exhibition of the country’s nuclear achievements, in Tehran, Iran, February 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

“The US and its Western allies… seriously undermined the Non-Proliferation Treaty by showing that the costs of adhering to the tenets of the non-proliferation regime could outweigh the benefits it may offer,” wrote Pezeshkian — clearly hinting that the harsh sanctions levied on Iran could lead it to weigh leaving the NPT.

Even if such a move would not amount to an immediate Iranian breakout to the bomb, the thinly veiled threat is one that the West needs to take into account.

In all likelihood, the reasoning behind the words is to goad the West back into talks with Iran — which, now on the verge of nuclear weapons, would occupy a significantly stronger negotiating position than before.

It is worth noting that Pezeshkian addressed “the US and its Western allies” — attempting to cast the US as a kind of “bad cop” harming the interests of everybody else.

Former EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, left, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, third left, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, rear center, and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, second right, wait for the start of closed-door nuclear talks with Iran in Vienna, Austria, November 21, 2014 (AP/Ronald Zak)

In the days since his article was published, Pezeshkian has received a measure of appreciation from Iran’s tightly controlled media, for ostensibly articulating Khamenei’s hardline positions in a soft-spoken manner.

Since being elected, Pezeshkian has tried to signal that he is “everyone’s president,” including the conservative camp that opposed his candidacy.

According to reports in Tehran, Pezeshkian has been attending daily morning services at the Iranian capital’s central mosque — a push to curry favor among those who have denigrated him as secular.

In this photo released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Iran’s President-elect Masoud Pezeshkian, left, sits next to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a mourning ceremony commemorating the 7th-century martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein, as a portrait of the late President Ebrahim Raisi is placed at center, in Tehran, Iran, July 12, 2024. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

In his piece, Pezeshkian also made sure to ingratiate himself with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps by decrying the 2020 assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force, a US-designated terrorist organization.

Soleimai, asserted Pezeshkian, was “a global anti-terrorism hero known for his success in saving the people of our region from the scourge of ISIS and other ferocious terrorist groups.”

“Today, the world is witnessing the harmful consequences of that choice,” wrote Pezeshkian of the US airstrike that killed Soleimani.

A demonstrator holds up a poster of the late IRGC Quds Force Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, during an anti-Israeli gathering in front of the British Embassy in Tehran, Iran, early April 14, 2024. The demonstration was held as Iran launched its first direct military attack against Israel. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Near the end of his piece, the new president declared that “Iran’s defense doctrine does not include nuclear weapons.” Tehran had downplayed that message during the tenure of Pezeshkian’s late predecessor Ebrahim Raisi, and regime leaders have lately been reported to be engaged in “strategic debate” over whether the time is ripe to build the bomb.

The article, therefore, comes off as an attempt to placate the West and bring about the renewal of talks to ease the sanctions — a centerpiece of Pezeshkian’s election campaign — whatever the regime may actually be planning as regards its nuclear program.

Translated and edited from the original on the Times of Israel’s Hebrew site Zman Yisrael.

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