The new puppet president of Iran was nominated to ease up international pressure.
Over the last decades we witness, time and again, the rise of a so-called reformist president, to rule the government of the Iranian regime. One might think that this is a sign of the emerging democracy within the totalitarian state apparatus, one might even think that this is the natural reaction to the uprising of the people in the provinces, the logical outcome of the women-rights movement or anything else you can imagine.
Although this may make sense to Western minds, the fact remains, that should the supreme leader not want this to happen, he could have avoided it altogether, not allowing a reformist to even take part in the elections.
A further look inside will show very quickly, that reformist presidents ruled in a time when Iran performed the most profound steps into the nuclear weapons project. Starting with Rafsanjani, who organized the transformation from a mere idea into a nuclear weapons project, through Khatami, a true believer and reformist, who allowed the AMAD project to reach almost full weaponization capacity, only stopped by the presence of the US next door in Iraq, and Rouhani, who enhanced the development of high-performance centrifuges and put them to use in high level enrichment while putting on the “right face” to advance the JCPOA.
In the past we therefore used to claim that there is no difference in who is elected and whether is a reformist or a conservative. This seems to be the wrong angle on things. It has become clearer that the supreme leader needs to make a further profound change and he needs the West for it. What could it be and how did he make it happen? There is not an easy answer available, but we can put together some relevant facts:
1. Iran has reached the capability of medium-high enrichment, which may provide her with the fissile material needed for a nuclear device. In this, many may consider Iran a threshold nuclear state, a definition both Iran and the IAEA might agree upon.
2. The Iranian regime coexists easily with the sanction imposed on her, but at this time the internal turmoil, the economic and the ecological state of things are disastrous. Iran needs the sanctions to be lifted soon.
3. Iran has made any effort to make sure that any regional player understands her importance and influence, but she is still considered a rogue player, not to be trusted.
4. The foundations of the Iranian regime are directly connected to the IRGC, and recently Western countries have started to designate the IRGC as a terror organization, upsetting same foundation to a critical point.
In view of the above, it becomes clear that Iran needs a new agreement with the West. This agreement should include the lifting of sanctions, stopping the designation of the IRGC and at least a partial agreement on the threshold status of the Iranian nuclear program. The only way to go about it is to provide the West with a seemingly pragmatic reformist president, Pezeshkian, who is the go-to partner the West can only dream of, or have they learned their lesson.
History tells a different story, one in which the façade of pragmatism has a background of another step taken towards a nuclear bomb, further control over neighboring countries and improvement of their status in the world of Islam, especially in comparison with Saudi Arabia.
Evidently, designating the IRGC as a terror organization is the best way to put pressure on Iran, even before the start of negotiation and surely during those. The IAEA should demand full monitoring of all nuclear related sites and the EU should demand the immediate and unconditional release of all double-citizenship prisoners. Should this not work out for the regime, we might find that the new president will not survive for long in this position.