Iran’s powerful vetting body for elected offices, the Guardian Council, on Sunday approved only one reformist candidate for the presidential election June 28 to replace the late Ebrahim Raisi.

Cardiologist and member of parliament Masoud Pezeshkian is supported by Iran’s Reform Front, a coalition of reformist groups and political parties.

Mohammad Khatami, president of Iran from 1997-2005 and still considered the leader of the reform movement, had said before the qualification of the candidates that reformists would participate in the elections if one of their members made it through the vetting stage. The comment was significant given that Khatami had refused to vote in recent parliamentary elections to protest the constricted range of candidates approved by the Council.

In an audio file that was recently revealed, Khatami said the previous approach of reformists to support candidates not from their group was wrong and equivalent to begging from the establishment.

The challenge for reformists in this election is to attract votes from a population that has grown tired of political participation, believing that it cannot improve their circumstances. The 2021 and 2024 parliamentary elections both had record-low turnout of under 50 percent. However, the experience of a radical conservative-led parliament and government may incentivize some Iranians to return to the ballot box.

Massive protests in 2022 after the death in police custody of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, and the continued deterioration of Iran’s economic, social, cultural, and political conditions have shown many Iranians that they cannot afford an idealistic and theoretical view of issues. In such a situation, the reformists can hope for the political participation of a part of the middle class.

Pezeshkian established a leftist Islamic medical students’ association after the 1979 revolution, served as minister of health in Khatami’s second term, and has been a long-time member of parliament. In order to be safe from the attacks of the opposite spectrum, Pezeshkian has moved closer to more moderate factions within the reformist camp, including Mohammad Reza Aref, a vice president under Khatami and the founder of a non-governmental organization that focuses on sustainable development. Pezeshkian’s campaign staff is also close to the middle range of reformers, perhaps in an effort to fend off attacks by conservatives.

Pezeshkian announced that if he becomes the president, he will choose as foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif,  who under Raisi’s predecessor, Hassan Rouhani, helped clinch the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In his first tweet after his qualification by the Guardian Council, Pezeshkian used the hashtag (#for_Iran) (#برای_ایران) and Zarif supported him by publishing a tweet with the same hashtag.

Another important advantage for Pezeshkian is that he is an ethnic Azeri – the largest linguistic group in Iran after Persians – and may attract votes from this group and other minorities.

Facing five conservative candidates is also an advantage as the conservative vote will be divided unless four of them drop out. Hardline candidate Saeed Jalili is seeking to distinguish himself from his main rival, parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, by stressing his intention to fight corruption.

Qalibaf’s winning card is that he has the support of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the so-called deep state.

Foreign policy in Iran is determined by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with important input from the IRGC. Pezeshkian has defined the priority of his foreign policy to communicate with other countries based on the principles of Iran’s dignity, reason, and interests. “If we want to work based on this policy, we must behave well with everyone and establish a good relationship with everyone based on dignity and interests,” he said. “The more we improve our foreign relations, the closer we get to the aforementioned policy, but the more tensions increase, the more we move away from it and the situation worsens.”

He also emphasized that he seeks brotherhood and harmony with Arab and Islamic countries.

His views appear similar to that of the Rouhani administration, which sought a balanced foreign policy with East and West, rather than the strong pro-China and pro-Russia orientation of the Raisi government.

Qalibaf is considered a pragmatic person among the conservatives. In his election statement, he emphasized improving living conditions, but he also referred to the Rouhani presidency as an era of backwardness. Qalibaf has not opposed negotiations with America and might be amenable to restoring the JCPOA, which the Trump administration quit in 2018 and the Raisi administration failed to revive.

A Jalili government, on the other hand, would likely double down on the “Look to the East” orientation of ties with Russia and China. Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator under the administration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was a strong opponent of the JCPOA and opposed negotiations with the U.S. even after they were approved by the Supreme Leader and Ahmadinejad in 2012.

Zarif revealed in his memoirs that “during Mr. Ahmadinejad’s government, negotiations in Oman began with [then Foreign Minister Ali] Salehi’s persistence and with the permission of the leadership… Mr. Jalili was against the Oman negotiations at the time; he was one of the anti-JCPOA figures during the nuclear negotiations.”

Even when Jalili’s former colleague Ali Bagheri – now the acting foreign minister — was entrusted with efforts to revive the JCPOA under President Raisi, Jalili expressed his opposition to Iran-U.S. negotiations in a letter to Ayatollah Khamenei, demanded the termination of the talks and said Iran should enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels.

The opposition of Jalili and the media close to him provoked a strong reaction from Bagheri. In September 2023, he said, “Those who, under the guise of defending values, are trying to make negotiation look anti-value in nature, actually want to deprive the system of this key and important tool to secure national interests.”

Javad Heiran-Nia directs the Persian Gulf Studies Group at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Iran. His book, Iran and the Security Order in the Persian Gulf, is being published by Routledge. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter: @J_Heirannia.