Who is Masoud Pezeshkian
Who is Masoud Pezeshkian? Masoud Pezeshkian, with a surprising passage through the Guardian Council, entered a competition that is viewed from multiple perspectives. Some consider him a tool of the Islamic Republic to increase participation, while others see him as a glimmer of hope for the empowerment of reformists, especially now that he has secured 42% of the votes alongside Saeed Jalili with 38%, making him one of the two candidates advancing to the second round of elections.
In any case, two weeks of early presidential election campaigning ushered Masoud Pezeshkian into a new phase of his political life. Two weeks during which, according to those close to him, he was advised to remain the same Masoud Pezeshkian he had been in previous decades.
This 69-year-old politician describes his political stance as rooted in principled conservatism, with a commitment to the principle of equitable distribution of resources and advancing development based on justice for reform.
Pezeshkian is the sole candidate from the reformist spectrum in the presidential elections.
He is among those Iranian politicians who are not always seen in a suit and tie and are known for their simple lifestyle. This heart surgery specialist has three children, whom he has been responsible for raising and nurturing after the death of his wife and another child in the 1990s. He has always been present on the political scene of the Islamic Republic, even if not widely recognized.
This is not the first time Masoud Pezeshkian has entered the presidential election race.
In 2013, he withdrew from the race, and in 2021, the Guardian Council did not allow him to enter the competition.
However, he has been a representative of Tabriz, Azarshahr, and Osku in the Islamic Consultative Assembly for four terms, and one could say his frankness and fiery speeches are another of his hallmarks. Whether in 2009, when in a speech after expressing loyalty to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, he used early Islamic history to say, ‘Don’t say I am the Emir, I command, and others must obey,’ or 14 years later in 2023, in an assembly where the number of his allies dwindled daily and he almost stood alone, he said, ‘The people’s voices are loud, and we in the assembly must hear it, not say if someone raises their voice, instead of hearing the alarm, we accuse them of acting against national security and imprison them.’
If we look back at Masoud Pezeshkian’s background, his role as Minister of Health in Mohammad Khatami’s second government is another significant aspect of his career.
It was during this period that one of the most complex cases of Khatami’s second term was opened: the death of Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photographer, after being detained, which is still under scrutiny today. A death that first introduced the term ‘encounter with a hard object’ into Iran’s political lexicon.
At that time, Masoud Pezeshkian, a member of the committee investigating the issue, although he stated that the bruises on Ms. Kazemi’s body were not related to torture, emphasized in a statement that Zahra Kazemi’s skull could not have been fractured accidentally by a fall or collision with an object.
Forensic medicine at the time declared the skull fracture as the cause of Zahra Kazemi’s death, but dozens of questions from her family’s lawyers about the case remained unanswered.
On September 19, 2022, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, Khatami’s government spokesperson, told Shargh newspaper that in one of the government meetings, Masoud Pezeshkian spoke of his certainty about the deliberate nature of the incident and the blow to Zahra Kazemi’s head and skull fracture.
In the following decades, Masoud Pezeshkian, who was a legislator and could also draw on his medical knowledge in his comments, spoke on various occasions about such suspicious deaths.
For instance, in 2009, regarding the deaths of detainees, he told Etemaad-e Melli newspaper, ‘How can someone who has no history of meningitis suddenly contract this deadly disease in prison? The main point is that detainees are beaten so much that authorities are forced to announce that the deceased had meningitis,’ a stance Pezeshkian maintained until the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when Iran was severely affected, as a member of the Health and Treatment Commission of the Assembly, he repeatedly criticized the policies adopted and believed that the government was treating the situation as a joke.
He also called the daily statistics on COVID deaths and cases unrealistic and once said that a war room should have been established so that each organization would not make its own decisions. Mr. Pezeshkian also attributed the Supreme Leader’s order banning the import of Western-made vaccines to misinformation given to Khamenei.
Masoud Pezeshkian, born in Mahabad and whose home language is Azerbaijani Turkish, is also fluent in Kurdish and was the head of the Turkic-speaking regions faction in the tenth term of the Islamic Consultative Assembly.
Although his opponents and rivals use this to criticize him, his supporters say Masoud Pezeshkian, with his justice-seeking approach, is in pursuit of securing the rights of all groups in Iran. He also explained this approach in his campaign slogan for Iran.
In television campaign programs or behind the microphone at gatherings, he consistently tried to show that he is not one for false promises, even if this approach does not lead to stirring and encouraging the undecided to vote.
In one of the television debates, he described the political arena in Iran as afflicted with an epidemic of lies. Mr. Pezeshkian repeatedly emphasized that if elected, he does not intend to make fundamental changes because there are programs and plans in the Islamic Republic, like the seventh development plan, to which he said he would also have to adhere.
This continuation of past paths on one hand and the repetition of his commitment to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic on the other drew attention from his opponents during these two weeks, to the extent that they consider this reformist spectrum candidate merely a pawn for advancing the Islamic Republic’s goals.
In any case, relying on himself and not anything beyond that, or the same Masoud Pezeshkian of previous decades, he has entered this new phase of his political life.
Regardless of what role he plays in this unexpected political process, if he wins against Saeed Jalili in the second round and reaches the Pasteur building, he will have a challenging path ahead, especially since Khamenei recently emphasized to the candidates that whoever becomes president should not appoint officials from those who have even a slight deviation from the revolution.
