Iran president’s high-wire appeal for diplomacy buffeted by winds of war

On his first visit to the US, Iran’s new president has spoken of a “new era of cooperation” with the west. It is an offer that intrigued diplomats, but left them struck by the constraints – ideological, internal and geopolitical – standing in the way of a substantive change in relations.

Masoud Pezeshkian came to New York for his first UN general assembly since his election asking the west to look at Iran again – largely by challenging the double standards that led to its silence about the massacres in Gaza. He has insisted Israel and the US, not Tehran, were the region’s troublemakers.

“We do not wish to be the cause of instability in the Middle East,” he said in a whirlwind round of interviews and meetings, including with the French president, Emmanuel Macron. “They are dragging us to a point where we do not wish to go,” the Iranian leader said of Israel. “There is no winner in warfare. We are only deluding ourselves if we believe that.”

More informal, instinctive and less forbidding than his conservative predecessor Ebrahim Raisi, Pezeskhian revived the moribund Iranian reformist movement, overcoming a highly filtered system to win a surprise electoral victory in July.

In his first two months in office, he has tried to pick his way through a polarised system, insisting Iran will only thrive if it is cohesive and he acts through consensus. He frequently trades on his personal integrity and modesty. His own life story, that of a heart surgeon and father who raised his children alone after he lost his wife in a car accident many years ago, is unusual. He has frequently said he will resign if he feels he is not having any impact reforming his country.

He came to New York with a stripped down delegation of 12, including two veteran diplomats who signed the nuclear deal with the west in 2015: Javad Zarif and Abbas Araghchi.

Yet at home he faces an army of conservative critics ready to pounce on any mistake, like admission of Iran’s weakness or, above all, any sign of softness to Israel. Some of these critics have not reconciled themselves to their defeat, and believe they are aligned with the 85-year-old uncompromising supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.

It was notable at the outset of his UN speech that Pezeshkian asserted his personal mandate, saying: “I entered the election campaign with a program based on ‘reforms’, ‘national unity’, ‘constructive interaction with the world’ and ‘economic development’ and I managed to gain the trust of my compatriots at the polls.”

He also has a battle to counter the west’s distrust. Behnam Ben Taleblu from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies dismissed him as “offering a change of style not substance. He is proof that the Islamic Republic is hoping to dupe the world by merely putting lipstick on a pig.”

Pezeshkian’s high-wire act is more difficult since his message of coexistence came as Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia Iran had helped found, is in a battle for survival, and he is facing calls from both Lebanon and within Iran to come to the militia’s aid before its leadership is destroyed and the whole so-called “circle of fire” that it has laid around Israel is doused.

At the same time western diplomats need his help to persuade Hezbollah to end its attacks on Israel that the group has said it will continue until Israel agrees to an immediate and complete ceasefire in Gaza.

But even if Iran was inclined to help, a moot point, Pezeshkian feels he has been burned by listening before to those that called on Iran not to seek revenge for Israel’s July assassination of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Pezeshkian recalled Iran had been urged afterwards to show restraint to avoid a wider war. “They kept telling us we are within reach of peace, perhaps in a week or so,” he told a briefing of western reporters including the Guardian. But he said that the promised elusive peace never came.

That briefing proved to be a source of controversy. Bloomberg headlined its account: “Iran’s President Says He’s Prepared to Ease Tensions With Israel”.

When domestic critics said Pezeshkian’s remarks were “naive and a source of national shame”, Iranian officials said correctly he had never said he wished to ease tensions with Israel, an entity he had accused of killing children and bombing hospitals.

The Bloomberg headline was based on his quote: “We’re willing to put all our weapons aside so long as Israel is willing to do the same. We’re not seeking to destabilize the region.” The Iranians said he had been referring to weapons of mass destruction, such as Israel’s nuclear bomb, and pointed out he had added: “But we cannot have outside actors come in, arm one side to the teeth and prevent the other side from having the means to defend themselves.”

His planned formal press conference was cancelled.

By the time he spoke to the UN on Tuesday, the message about whether Iran feels it can intervene to defend Hezbollah remained unclear. “Naturally blind Israeli state terrorism cannot go unanswered,” he said. “The responsibility for all consequences will be borne by those governments who have thwarted all global efforts to end this horrific catastrophe and have the audacity to call themselves the champion of human rights.”