The threat of war is empowering Iran’s hardliners

The Economist-Aug22nd2024

“I Ihouldn’t have voted,” says one unveiled Iranian woman. After a burst of enthusiastic voting in the second round of Iran’s recent presidential election, popular disillusionment has returned. Despondency is back at the top, too. Javad Zarif (pictured), Iran’s former foreign minister and its new vice-president, resigned on August 11th. He ran Masoud Pezeshkian’s campaign and helped revive hopes of a more representative government. The announcement of the new cabinet on August 21st showed how those hopes have been dashed.

Mr Pezeshkian has appointed Western-orientated and -educated men to negotiate with the West and try to ease sanctions, but he has retained hardliners to run internal affairs. His interior minister is a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander who has suppressed protests against the regime. He has kept his hardline predecessor’s intelligence minister despite the numerous breaches under his watch, most recently the assassination of Hamas’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. The vice-president and head of Iran’s atomic agency also keeps his job.

“Ishouldn’t have voted,” says one unveiled Iranian woman. After a burst of enthusiastic voting in the second round of Iran’s recent presidential election, popular disillusionment has returned. Despondency is back at the top, too. Javad Zarif (pictured), Iran’s former foreign minister and its new vice-president, resigned on August 11th. He ran Masoud Pezeshkian’s campaign and helped revive hopes of a more representative government. The announcement of the new cabinet on August 21st showed how those hopes have been dashed.

Mr Pezeshkian has abandoned promises to promote women and Iran’s ethnic and religious minorities whose votes helped him to victory. There is only one female minister, the second in the Islamic Republic’s history. She is in charge of roads. Again, there are no Sunnis or Kurds.

Apologists insist that without appeasing hardliners, who control parliament, mps would have blocked the appointments. Instead they approved them all. To make any progress Mr Pezeshkian also needs to keep Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on side. He said Mr Khamenei had signed off on the cabinet.

But Iranians expected better. Mr Pezeshkian asked Mr Zarif to suggest cabinet members based on merit but then rejected all but three of his proposals. His public opposition to the use of force to impose the veil has vanished. The police and judiciary continue to detain women for failing to wear it and to jail female activists. Iranians who promoted a boycott of the election feel vindicated. “The gap between the people and the regime briefly narrowed but is now gaping again,” says another female voter. “Pezeshkian’s just a yes-man.”

The powers of Iran’s presidents have always been circumscribed. The threat of regional escalation after Haniyeh’s assassination and the presence of American vessels close to Iranian waters have prompted the regime to quash any hints of reform.

For now, repression will keep the regime’s critics in check. But it still needs the West to solve its biggest problem—economic isolation. Mr Khamenei has tried looking to China and Russia, and failed. Under Mr Pezeshkian’s predecessor inflation was, on average, over 15 points higher than under any other Iranian president. A coffee in Tehran costs almost as much as in London. Mr Zarif has gone, but an ally, his British-educated former deputy, Abbas Araqchi, is slated to be foreign minister. And while Mr Khamenei damns Western perfidy, Mr Pezeshkian is the first president who has been permitted to take calls from Western leaders in three years. ■

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