Reformist Masoud Pezeshkian defeated hardline incumbent Saeed Jalili by a margin of nearly 2.8 million votes in Iran’s second presidential election on Saturday.
The 69-year-old president-elect aims to improve relations with the West and ease the mandatory headscarf law. Although Pezeshkian respects the authority of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and does not want any major changes to Iran’s government, he faces a number of challenges – opposition from hardliners, the Israel-Hamas conflict and Western concerns about Iran’s nuclear program.
Here are some facts about Masoud Pezeshkian:
-
Masoud Pezeshkian was born on September 29, 1954 in Mahabad, West Azerbaijan. His father was Azeri and mother Kurdish. He speaks Azari and focuses on the affairs of Iran’s minority ethnic groups. Mr. Pezeshkian lost his wife Fatemeh Majidi and one of his daughters in a car accident in 1994. He decided not to remarry and raised his two other sons and daughter alone.
-
He is a heart surgeon and has served as the head of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences. He became a warrior and physician during the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988), and sent medical teams to the front lines.
-
Masoud Pezeshkian served as the Minister of Health, Treatment and Medical Education under the administration of President Mohammad Khatami. He has been a member of the Iranian Parliament, representing Tabriz, Azarshahr and Osku in several terms (8th to 12th). He served as the first deputy speaker from 2016 to 2020.
-
Pezeshkian, 69, registered for presidential elections in 2011 and 2021. He withdrew in 2011 and was disqualified in 2021. For the 2024 presidency, Pezeshkian campaigned with the slogan “For Iran,” aimed at contrasting his policies with those of his rival Saeed Jalili.
-
Masoud Pezeshkian has been involved in several controversies. He participated in the 2003 autopsy of Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, who was detained, tortured and died in custody. He gave the cause of death as intracranial bleeding, but claimed there were no signs of injury or cuts, refuting international outrage and calls for an investigation.
In 2017, Pezeshkian admitted that he was among the first people to prevent women not wearing hijab from entering universities and hospitals in 1978, even before the mandatory hijab policy was officially introduced. In 2022, following the death of Mahsa Amini, he said that arresting a girl for not wearing a hijab and then returning her body to her family was “unacceptable in the Islamic Republic”.