NEW HAVEN – Following his near-death experience, Donald Trump chose a running mate who takes ideas seriously. To be sure, J.D. Vance has adopted a host of different positions over his short career, even attacking Trump before becoming his attack dog. The Democrats will naturally make the most of these inconsistencies, and Republicans will predictably counter with partisan blasts against Vice President Kamala Harris for her failure to guide a stuttering President Joe Biden down the right path.
But both sides will confront their “moments of truth” when forced to clarify their positions on America’s biggest foreign-policy challenges. This will become apparent when Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of Congress on July 24. Although Vance differs from Trump on other matters, both are strong supporters of Netanyahu’s hardline stance, particularly his insistence that Israel must continue its war against Hamas until the group has been eliminated.
Biden and Harris will have a tough time responding to Netanyahu’s speech without their party paying a political price at the polls. While Trump will attract some fragment of the Jewish community that typically votes Democratic, Gallup polls show that millions more Americans – especially Muslims, but also many Jews – oppose Netanyahu’s hardline stance. Yet many within this cohort are appalled by the Biden administration’s own failure to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza. Though they won’t vote for Trump, they may abstain from voting at all, which could make all the difference in swing states.
But the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, could also make a decisive difference in moving these alienated voters back into the Democratic column. Pezeshkian, elected following the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in May, is very different from his ultra-religious predecessor. Instead of seeking divine inspiration, he went to medical school and was so outstanding that he served a five-year term as president of the University of Medical Sciences in Tabriz. Between 2001 and 2005, he served as the health minister in the national government before turning to electoral politics and serving as parliament’s first deputy speaker from 2016 to 2020.
Few leaders anywhere have combined such distinguished careers in academics, public service, and electoral politics. Before his name could appear on the ballot, however, his candidacy had to be approved by the Council of Guardians, dominated by Iran’s religious elite, which has the exclusive constitutional authority to approve candidates’ qualifications.
Over the past 40 years, the Council has exercised its prerogative in very different ways, often permitting secularists to run for office. But in 2020, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, used his authority over the Guardians to ensure that Raisi, along with five other religious extremists, monopolized the ballot, making it impossible for voters to take a different path.
This was hardly surprising, since Khamenei was 81 in 2020 and wanted to be certain that the next president would use his influence to guarantee that the next Supreme Leader would continue to embrace his own ultra-orthodox principles. Raisi’s tragic accident, moreover, led Khamenei, now 85 and near the end of his life, to address the nation on the overriding importance of selecting a super-religious successor who would follow in his footsteps. Against this background, Pezeshkian seemed to have absolutely no chance of gaining a place on the ballot.
But times had changed in the three years since the Guardians’ exclusionary decisions helped the extremist Raisi win the presidency. The turning point came in 2022, when a young woman, Mahsa Amini, died in police custody after being detained for failing to wear a head scarf in public. The government responded to massive protests throughout the country by killing hundreds of demonstrators. Although the protests waned over the course of 2024, Raisi’s sudden death led the insurgents to threaten the Guardians that they would propel the country to the brink of civil war if religious extremists once again monopolized the ballot. Faced with this grim prospect, the Guardians gave in and permitted Pezeshkian to run against five leading followers of Khamenei.
Iranians responded to this opportunity by giving the 69-year-old Pezeshkian a decisive victory – by three million votes – over his most formidable religious opponent. Since his triumph, Pezeshkian has been careful to interpret his electoral mandate in a sophisticated fashion. He has made it clear that, upon Khamenei’s death, he has absolutely no intention of promoting a secularist like himself to serve as Supreme Leader. Instead, he has simply emphasized that the constitution recognizes that all Iranians have “the exalted dignity” to determine the meaning of their own lives, implying that he will support the selection of any Supreme Leader who, in contrast to Raisi, pledges to uphold this provision.
Even more important for present purposes, he has also issued a remarkable “Message to the New World,” published in English in the Tehran Times. In it, Pezeshkian declares that he will “welcome sincere efforts to alleviate tensions and will reciprocate good-faith with good-faith.” That suggests a willingness to reduce the threat of nuclear war by opening up Iran’s nuclear facilities for international inspection in exchange for the US reopening its markets to Iran’s producers and consumers.
This offer is precisely what the Biden administration needs to frame a credible response to Netanyahu’s address to Congress. In contrast to the cheers that Americans will hear from Trump and Vance, Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be in a position to announce a new approach to peace in the Middle East.
To be sure, Biden and Harris should not express great confidence that preliminary negotiations with Pezeshkian will ultimately lead to an accord that will radically reduce the escalating risk of nuclear war between Israel and Iran. That can happen only if the Harris team manages to win the election in November, and Pezeshkian manages to overcome the resistance of his ultra-religious opponents.
Nevertheless, doesn’t it make sense for Americans to give the administration a chance to achieve this breakthrough, rather than allowing Trump and Vance to squander this opportunity? Harris should put this question to voters. But they will be able to do so only if Blinken immediately reaches out to Iran and joins Pezeshkian in announcing that their countries will be exploring a new path to peace in the Middle East. #Nepal
Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, is the author of Revolutionary Constitutions: Charismatic Leadership and the Rule of Law (Harvard University Press, 2019), which includes a chapter devoted to Iranian political development during the past century.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024.
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