Pezeshkian’s Win Doesn’t Change the Fact That Iran Is Dangerously Close to the Bomb

Winfield Myers

Over 15 million Iranians turned out on Friday to cast their vote for reformist presidential candidate Massoud Pezeshkian, who defeated his uber-conservative rival Saeed Jalili.

Washington quickly sought to emphasize that it doesn’t anticipate the 69-year-old heart surgeon having any meaningful impact on the regime. “We have no expectation that this election will lead to a fundamental change in Iran’s direction or its policies,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters on Monday.

Miller stressed that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei makes the substantive decisions in Iran. “Obviously, if the new president had the authority to make steps to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, to stop funding terrorism, to stop destabilizing activities in the region, those would be steps that we would welcome,” Miller said. “But needless to say, we don’t have any expectation that that’s what’s likely to ensue.”

Read the full article at the Times of Israel.

Lazar Berman is the Times of Israel‘s diplomatic reporter and a Milstein Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Lazar Berman is the diplomatic correspondent at the Times of Israel, where he also covers Christian Affairs. He holds an M.A. in Security Studies from Georgetown University and taught at Salahuddin University in Iraqi Kurdistan. Berman is a reserve captain in the IDF’s Commando Brigade and served in a Bedouin unit during his active service.
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I recently witnessed something I haven’t seen in a long time. On Friday, August 16, 2024, a group of pro-Hamas activists packed up their signs and went home in the face of spirited and non-violent opposition from a coalition of pro-American Iranians and American Jews. The last time I saw anything like that happen was in 2006 or 2007, when I led a crowd of Israel supporters in chants in order to silence a heckler standing on the sidewalk near the town common in Amherst, Massachusetts. The ridicule was enough to prompt him and his fellow anti-Israel activists to walk away, as we cheered their departure. It was glorious.