BEHIND THE IRAN HEADLINES Series, July 30, 2024, Alireza Jafarzadeh, NCRI-US Deputy Director
Deputy director, U.S. Office, National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), Washington
Masoud Pezeshkian, appointed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei earlier this week as his new president, has taken office. He has emphatically pledged that Khamenei’s wishes are indeed his commands.
He wasted no time in his inaugural remarks praising Ebrahim Raisi, known as the “Butcher of Tehran,” and Qassem Soleimani, the terror master and Khamenei’s chief architect of bloodshed and mayhem in the Middle East.
Pezeshkian also met with the heads of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as representatives of Hezbollah and the Houthis, all of whom attended his inaugural event. In his remarks, he assured all of Tehran’s proxies of continued absolute support.
Notably absent were any references to fulfilling his campaign promises about compulsory veiling and removing internet filtering. Pezeshkian quickly demonstrated his true colors, which are no different than Khamenei and Raisi.
The clerical regime, founded on the principle of the absolute rule of a supreme leader, is ideologically, structurally, and intrinsically irreformable. Today, no serious policymaker on either side of the Atlantic is under any illusion about the absurdity of the notion of a “reformist” president in theocratic Iran as a harbinger of meaningful change in Tehran’s domestic and foreign conduct.
Indeed, this election should serve as a point of inflection in Iran policy, given how massively it was boycotted by Iranians – an uprising of its own kind through non-participation in a mandatory act at the polling stations.
In her address to a U.S. Senate conference on July 25, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), stressed, “The missing element in the policy regarding Iran is the role of the Iranian people and Resistance. This regime will neither change its behavior nor fall on its own. The overthrow of the regime is the responsibility of the people of Iran and the Iranian Resistance.”
Indeed, all the West needs to do is deny the repressive rulers of Iran any money or resources while recognizing the right of the Iranian people to overthrow the regime and establish a democratic secular republic in Iran.