Who is Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s newly elected president?

Masoud Pezeshkian, 69, was elected the new president of Iran on Friday in run-off voting with a clear majority. According to media reports, he received 16.3 million votes against his rival candidate Jalili, who got 13.5 million votes.

Who is Pezeshkian?

Pezeshkian was born on Sept. 29, 1954, in Mahabad in northwestern Iran to an Azeri father and a Kurdish mother. He speaks Azeri and has long focused on the affairs of Iran’s vast minority ethnic groups. Like many, he served in the Iran-Iraq war, sending medical teams to the battlefront.

He became a heart surgeon and served as the head of the Tabriz University of Medical Sciences. However, personal tragedy shaped his life after a 1994 car crash killed his wife, Fatemeh Majidi, and a daughter. The doctor never remarried and raised his remaining two sons and a daughter alone.

Pezeshkian entered politics first as the country’s deputy health minister and later as the health minister under the administration of reformist President Mohammad Khatami. In 2006, Pezeshkian was elected as a lawmaker representing Tabriz. He later served as a deputy parliament speaker and backed reformist and moderate causes, though analysts often described him more as an “independent” than aligned with the voting blocs. That independent label was also embraced by Pezeshkian in his campaign.

Yet Pezeshkian at the same time honored Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, on one occasion wearing its uniform to parliament. He repeatedly criticized the United States and praised the Guard for shooting down an American drone in 2019, saying it “delivered a strong punch in the mouth of the Americans and proved to them that our country will not surrender.”

In 2011, Pezeshkian registered to run for president but withdrew his candidacy. In 2021, he found himself and other prominent candidates barred from running by authorities, allowing an easy win for Raisi.