Pezeshkian in New York and Khamenei’s moment of truth

This article is part of an MEI strategic initiative that examines how to enhance regional cooperation between the United States and its partners on addressing the challenges posed by Iran across the region, particularly in key areas like Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Israel-Palestine, and the Ukraine war. Through a series of articles, short papers, events, podcasts, and a final policy report, the initiative will showcase a broad range of viewpoints and subject-matter expertise to inform a holistic and resolute approach toward Iran.
 

Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, arrived in New York this week for the United Nations General Assembly amid both widespread skepticism and a small dose of hopeful anticipation about his message to the world. In the end, he landed somewhere in the middle. While he did not enchant his main target audience, the US and other Western governments, as previous Iranian presidents like Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005) or even Hassan Rouhani (2013-2021) did, neither did he dishearten them the way Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013) or Ebrahim Raisi (2021-2024) managed to do during their visits to the UN.

This Western ambivalence is not about Pezeshkian per se but whether the true powerbrokers in Tehran — Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards — were serious when they dispatched the president as the regime’s official emissary with a message of peace and cooperation. The truth is that Tehran is trying to pull off a tough balancing act. It is striving to remain loyal to its long-standing ideological priorities, namely confronting Israel and its main backer, the United States, while also working to advance its tangible short-term national interests. And nothing is more pressing than avoiding direct Iranian involvement in a regional war that could pit Iran against the US.

Perhaps at no point since 1979 has the Islamist regime’s senior leadership had to wrestle with this dichotomy as much as it does today. The outcome of this soul-searching process is still an open question. Why this dichotomy has emerged is well known. It is a result of policy choices made in Tehran and the profound predicament facing the regime — and Iran’s regional agenda is at the heart of it all.

Pezeshkian’s message … or Khamenei’s?

In New York, Pezeshkian mostly did what was expected of him: engage in a careful diplomatic dance. He criticized Western stances over Israeli actions in Gaza and Lebanon and lambasted Israel as an evil-doer. But he did not imply that Iran had any interest in a military conflict with Israel. In fact, he suggested Iran is ready to de-escalate, saying “we are prepared to give up all our weapons, provided Israel also disarms” — an assertion that got him into hot water with hardliners back in Tehran.

Pezeshkian might have strayed a bit from regime’s official line but his core message on Israel was essentially the same as Khamenei’s. Earlier in the week, the supreme leader had also referred to Israel as a renegade state but his prescription was to suggest pan-Islamic solidarity for the Palestinians without raising the specter of war. In that sense, Tehran’s strategy has not changed since the current tensions in the region erupted in October 2023: pressuring Israel with attacks through allies such as Hezbollah, the Houthis, or pro-Iran militants in Iraq and Syria while keeping the tensions from reaching the Iranian homeland.

This strategy was working until Israel decided to turn the tables on Iran. Israel’s attempt to force Iran’s hand — to make it choose between engaging in war with Israel, and by extension the Americans, or staying out of such a high-risk conflict — has over the last year included dozens of deadly attacks on high-value targets, including the Iranian consulate in Damascus, senior Revolutionary Guards officers in Lebanon and Syria, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on the same day Pezeshkian was inaugurated. Aside from firing a volley of drones and missiles at Israel in April, Tehran has essentially refrained from retaliating, calling Israeli actions a “trap” to put Tehran and Washington on a collision course.

And yet, this Iranian restraint cannot continue forever if Israel keeps the pressure up, which might well be what Israel decides to do. One of the outcomes of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel is that Israeli leaders seem to have abandoned the policy of “mowing the grass” — striking at Iran’s proxies when needed — and they now reckon that it is Iran itself, at the head of the Axis of Resistance, that has to be coerced into making difficult decisions about its path forward.

Regardless of whether or not one thinks Israeli actions against Iran over the last few years are reckless or in breach of international law, the result is that Tehran has never before been this hard pressed to choose between its national interests and the battle against Israel. While Iranian officials are holding back, with reports suggesting that Iran declined Hezbollah’s request to fire missiles directly at Israel, there is no sign that Tehran is ready to take the big plunge.

In New York, the closest Pezeshkian came to accepting Israel as a fellow UN member state was by referring to it by its official name and not using the customary “Zionist regime” insult. Such a gesture is not insignificant in the context of politics in Tehran but it is insufficient to validate Pezeshkian’s statement in his UN speech that Tehran wants regional de-escalation and cooperation. For Pezeshkian and his handlers back in Tehran to be taken seriously by Western powers as agents of de-escalation, they will need to do more. A first step would be to show a willingness to abandon the policy of carrying out armed campaigns against Israel — as manifested in the actions of Iran’s proxies in the Axis of Resistance.

Such a scenario cannot happen until Israeli leaders once again accept the idea of a Palestinian state next to Israel, which is unlikely to happen anytime soon. But the mere suspension of hostilities between Hamas and Hezbollah on the one side and Israel on the other and a resumption of peace talks aimed at a two-state solution might give Iran an off-ramp. In the past, with the Camp David Accords of 1978-79 or the Oslo Accords of 1993, Tehran opted to be a nay-sayer. But the pressure on Iran to change course on the Palestinian question has never been as intense as it is today.

By shifting gears and aligning with other regional states, like Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, or the Gulf states — all of which decry Israel’s actions against the Palestinians and in Lebanon while at the same accepting Israel’s basic right to exist — Iran could free itself from the strategic straitjacket it finds itself in. It will not be easy for a regime that has invested so much energy over nearly half a century in denouncing Israel to suddenly shift course, but doing so is the price Tehran has to pay to be able to focus on the dire challenges the regime faces at home.      

Ideology vs. national interest

We can assume Pezeshkian wishes he could have spent his time in New York focused not on Israel and regional tensions but on pushing for new nuclear talks with Western powers. His key foreign policy advisors — led by Javad Zarif and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who accompanied him to New York — helped draft the 2015 nuclear deal. President Donald Trump killed that deal in 2018 but Tehran still needs a way out of the American-led sanctions regime.

Long gone are the days when Iranian officials would claim that sanctions were manageable. They are not, and Pezeshkian has repeatedly admitted that Tehran’s 20-year-long effort to circumvent them has either failed or achieved small gains at a steep cost. What he has not admitted is that Iran’s nuclear program is one of the two main areas of contention with Washington. The other is Iran’s regional agenda, including sponsorship of militant proxies that attacks US and Israeli interests.

Put simply, any Iranian effort to work toward a new nuclear deal without adjusting its regional policies risks meeting the same fate as the 2015 agreement. Significant relief from sanctions requires an Iranian-American process of détente that cannot be limited to the nuclear file. And herein lies Pezeshkian’s — and Khamenei’s — fundamental test.

As a presidential candidate, Pezeshkian vowed to make Iran once again a “player” in the Middle East, not as a sponsor of the Axis of Resistance but as an economic powerhouse and a regional hub for trade given the country’s central geographic location. Indeed, Tehran’s foreign policy since 1979 has come at a high cost for the Iranian economy. Neighboring states, such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other comparable economies, have experienced far greater growth rates and mapped out economic plans that sanction-strapped Iran could not possibly entertain.

Khamenei may have allowed Pezeshkian to run as a candidate and win the presidency in Iran’s highly engineered elections process, but that does not necessarily mean he will agree with the new president’s proposals on how to stop Tehran’s foreign policy actions from wrecking the country’s economic future. The question is how much leeway Khamenei and his foot soldiers in the Revolutionary Guards will give Pezeshkian in an attempt to start a new chapter.

Returning from New York to Tehran, Pezeshkian told the Iranian public that new nuclear negotiations will be under way with the Europeans. That is the sort of spark of hope that the beleaguered Iranian people badly needed. But for such hopes to be realized, Pezeshkian has to persuade Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards that a new nuclear deal cannot realistically be decoupled from Iran’s deeply controversial leadership of the Axis of Resistance. Tehran’s sponsorship of militant groups across the Middle East makes it a wild-card spoiler, not a destination for foreign investment as Pezeshkian wants to see. Maintaining its current regional approach is tantamount to ensuring Iran’s continued isolation on the international stage, further economic decline, and the ongoing specter of regional war. It is time for the Islamic Republic to explore new ideas about how it can help the cause of the Palestinian people without staking so much of Iran’s basic national interest on it.

Alex Vatanka is the director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute and a senior fellow with MEI’s Black Sea Program. His most recent book is The Battle of the Ayatollahs in Iran: The United States, Foreign Policy, and Political Rivalry Since 1979. @AlexVatanka

Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images