Masoud Pezeshkian

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Masoud Pezeshkian was 69 years old when he became the ninth president of Iran, and no one older had ever held the job. For most of his working life he was not a full-time politician at all. He was a heart surgeon, a man trained to open chests and repair what he found inside. Now he sits at the top of an elected system that answers to higher authorities, in a region where the strikes and counterstrikes arrive faster than any cabinet can meet. How does a cardiac surgeon from a modest provincial background end up leading a country of this weight? What does a president actually control when generals, a supreme leader and foreign air forces all have a say? And what kind of man keeps reciting scripture, cheering for his local football club and governing through war at the same time? The answers start far from Tehran, in a small town in the northwest.

  79592

• 2. Mahabad to the Operating Room

  ›

  On the 29th of September 1954, Masoud Pezeshkian was born in Mahabad, in West Azerbaijan. His parents, Mohammadali Pezeshkian and Mahboubeh Soudbakhsh, both came from Urmia and had moved to Mahabad for work before he arrived. He spoke Azeri and Kurdish fluently, and reports often described his parentage as mixed Azeri and Kurdish. He disagreed with that picture. He considered himself and both of his parents to be full Turks.

  In 1973 he received his diploma and travelled to Zabol to carry out his conscription duty. It was there that medicine first caught his interest. When his service ended he went back to his home province, entered Tabriz University of Medical Sciences and graduated with a medical degree.

  The Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988 shaped his early career. He visited the front lines often, arranged for medical teams to be sent and worked there as both a fighter and a doctor. In 1985 he finished his general practitioner course and began teaching physiology at the medical college.

  After the war he returned to study, specializing in general surgery at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences. In 1993 Iran University of Medical Sciences gave him a subspecialty in cardiac surgery. That training made him a heart surgeon, and it led to the presidency of his old university in Tabriz, a post he held from 1994 to 1999. That span would overlap with his first job in national government.

  2561316

• 3. Ministries and Parliament

  ›

  Before Tehran called, Pezeshkian served as governor of the counties of Piranshahr and Naghadeh. His national career began in 1997, when Mohammad Khatami's administration made him Deputy Health Minister. From 2001 to 2005 he ran the whole ministry as Minister of Health and Medical Education.

  Parliament came next. Between 2008 and 2024, voters in Tabriz, Osku and Azarshahr sent him to the chamber five times. From 2016 to 2020 he held the post of First Deputy Speaker.

  In 2016 he was also elected head of the Fraction of Turkic Regions. The group was created to defend the right to education in the Turkic languages of Iran. It was the first ethnocultural political group in Iranian history to have representation in the national legislature. Pezeshkian himself argued that schooling in türk dili should be free.

  His early attempts at the presidency went nowhere. In 2013 he registered for the race and then withdrew. In 2021 he was rejected from running. In 2024 he would enter a third time, this time presenting himself as a moderate.

  1718232425

• 4. Ballots and Cabinet

  ›

  The run-off of the 2024 presidential election took place on the 5th of July. Pezeshkian collected 16.3 million votes, or 53.7 percent. His opponent, the principlist nominee Saeed Jalili, took 13.5 million votes, or 44.3 percent. The result was declared on the 6th of July 2024. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei formally appointed him on the 28th of July, and he was sworn in before parliament on the 30th.

  His first appointments mixed old hands and familiar faces. Mohammad Eslami stayed on as vice president and head of the Atomic Energy Organization. Mohsen Haji-Mirzaei, a former education minister, became chief of staff. Former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was named vice president for Strategic Affairs, and former finance minister Ali Tayebnia became a senior adviser.

  On the 11th of August 2024, the names of nineteen ministers were announced. Zarif soon resigned in protest at the makeup of the cabinet. On the 21st of August, parliament approved the entire list, something it had not done since 2001. Pezeshkian had chosen ministers to appease every camp in Iranian politics. They included Abbas Araghchi, who helped negotiate the 2015 nuclear deal. They also included Farzaneh Sadegh, the second woman to serve as a minister since the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

  During the campaign he had promised a broader government, and he delivered on it. Two women became vice presidents, one woman became a minister, and another became the government's spokesperson. One of the vice presidents, Zahra Behrouz Azar, had criticized the Guidance Patrol. A Sunni politician was made Vice President of Rural Development, and the government also named its first Sunni governor of a state. Women were appointed as governors across the country.

  He has spoken just as firmly about ethnic rights. Pezeshkian says the rights of Azeris, Kurds and Baluchis must be protected, and he backs Article 15 of the Constitution for every ethnicity. That article makes Persian the official language but leaves local languages free in the press and in the teaching of their literature. He argues this reduces separatist motives, and he supports teaching Azerbaijani in Iranian schools. The first real test of his government came abroad, in Iraq.

  2631344648

• 5. Missiles and Diplomacy

  ›

  In July 2024, Iran threatened to attack Israel after the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Pezeshkian reportedly urged Khamenei to think again, warning that an attack could badly damage Iran's economy and infrastructure. According to The Telegraph, he also clashed with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Guard wanted a direct strike on Israel, while he preferred hitting Israeli bases in neighboring countries to avoid a full-scale war. Publicly, he insisted that Iran had a right to retaliate.

  His first foreign trip as president took him to Iraq in September 2024. Relations between Iran and the United States, both allies of Iraq, were worsening as attacks went back and forth between the US and pro-Iranian militias during the Gaza war. In Erbil he also met leaders of Iraqi Kurdistan.

  On the 17th and the 18th of September 2024, pagers carried by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon. On the 23rd, Pezeshkian said Iran would ease hostilities if Israel did the same. The next day he addressed the UN General Assembly and spoke of opening a 'constructive chapter' in Iran's international relations. He said Tehran was 'ready to engage' with Western powers on its nuclear program, as long as they acted in good faith.

  Then the sequence turned violent. On the 27th of September 2024, Israel killed the Iranian commander Abbas Nilforoushan along with Hezbollah leaders including Hassan Nasrallah. Israel invaded southern Lebanon from the 1st of October, and Iran fired missiles at Israel the same day. Pezeshkian called the strikes a response to Israeli aggression and warned Israel against entering a conflict with Iran.

  His wider foreign policy runs on a few fixed lines. He wants to revive the 2015 agreement with the United States and other powers, in return for lifting sanctions. He wants friendly relations with every country except Israel, and he has said Iran will keep backing the 'Axis of Resistance'. He has described Israel's actions in Gaza as 'genocide' and 'crimes against humanity'. He defended Iran's missile program as necessary for defense, and he demanded that Israel be disarmed first before any talks on the subject.

  On the 17th of January 2025, he and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty in Moscow. It entered into force on the 2nd of October 2025. Saudi Arabia's King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had sent congratulations after the election, and the crown prince later called the improved ties a 'historic turning point'. In late January 2026, after a US aircraft carrier arrived in the region, the two men spoke by phone. The crown prince said Saudi territory and airspace would not be used for military action against Iran.

  43445153100

• 6. War Comes to Tehran

  ›

  On the 13th of June 2025, Israel began airstrikes on Iran, opening what became known as the Twelve-Day War. Pezeshkian responded by ordering Iran to suspend its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency. In the first hours, Israeli air and ground forces killed prominent military leaders, nuclear scientists and politicians.

  On the 16th of June, Israel tried to kill Pezeshkian himself. The Fars News Agency and US intelligence sources both confirmed the attempt. The target was a building where he was meeting other top Iranian officials. Six missiles or bombs hit its entrances and exits, meant to trap everyone inside and disrupt the airflow. The power was cut to the targeted floor, but the officials escaped through a pre-planned emergency exit. Reports say Pezeshkian suffered only a minor leg injury.

  A second, larger war began on the 28th of February 2026, with joint strikes by the United States and Israel. Pezeshkian called them a 'blatant violation' of humanitarian principles and an 'open declaration of war' against Muslims. The attacks killed Khamenei. On the 1st of March 2026, the Constitution placed Pezeshkian on the Interim Leadership Council, along with Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei and Guardian Council member Alireza Arafi. He also denounced a strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' school in Minab, which reportedly killed over 160 people, calling it a 'barbaric act'.

  On the 7th of March 2026, he went on state television to apologize to neighboring countries for Iranian retaliatory missile attacks. Iran would suspend such attacks, he said, unless those countries were used as launchpads against Iran. The statement showed how little control the country's civilian leaders have over the Revolutionary Guard. In the same period he explicitly rejected US President Donald Trump's demand for Iran's 'unconditional surrender'.

  6061636677

• 7. The Guard and the Street

  ›

  In June 2024, at a university meeting, Pezeshkian answered his critics by putting on an IRGC uniform. He said he would wear it again, because the Guard was the 'reason for the country remaining unified'. He calls the present-day Guard 'different from the past', and he condemned the Trump administration's 2019 decision to label it a terrorist organization. After Iran shot down an American drone that year, he called the American government 'terrorist'. He described the Guard's action as 'a strong punch to the mouths of the leaders of criminal America'.

  Yet he has criticized the system more than once. During the 2009 post-election protests, he spoke against the treatment of demonstrators. He cited words attributed to the first Shiite Imam, Ali, telling Malik Ashtar not to treat people 'like a wild animal'. In 2018 he called the handling of protests 'scientifically and intellectually wrong' and said 'We should have done better.'

  The 2022 protests, after the death of Mahsa Amini, showed his split stance. He asked for an assessment team to clarify what had happened, and he said that the treatment and trials of protesters broke the constitution and that defendants needed lawyers. Later he issued a statement condemning the protests as against the people's interest. During the 2025-2026 protests, he gave a conciliatory televised interview, promising to tackle economic hardship while blaming the United States and Israel for inciting violence. He later apologized to the nation for the crackdown.

  Patrick Wintour, diplomatic editor of The Guardian, has called him uncharismatic and short of authority. Pezeshkian has himself said he cannot fix the country's problems from the presidency. He describes himself as beholden to Khamenei on foreign policy and held back at home on issues such as social media regulation. Conservative politicians have attacked him for advertising that helplessness, and the reformist newspaper Tejarat-e Farda has pointed to 'weaknesses in his performance'.

  During the 2026 war, reports suggested the pressure from the Guard grew. After the assassination of Ali Larijani, Pezeshkian apparently named Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr secretary of the Supreme National Security Council under Guard pressure. Iran International reported deep disagreements between Pezeshkian and IRGC commander Ahmad Vahidi over the economic effects of the war. Later reports said Vahidi blocked a new intelligence minister, rejecting every candidate including Hossein Dehghan, on the grounds that wartime leadership posts should be filled by the Guard.

  8891575883

• 8. Life Outside Politics

  ›

  In 1994, Pezeshkian's wife, a gynecologist, died in a car crash along with their youngest son. He raised his two remaining sons and his daughter on his own and has never remarried.

  His daughter Zahra holds a master's degree in chemistry from Sharif University of Technology. She worked at Jam Petrochemical until the Rouhani government came to power. She is also regarded as one of his political advisers.

  His faith is part of his daily identity. Pezeshkian teaches the Quran and recites the Nahj al-balagha, a key text for Shia Muslims. His languages also include Persian, Arabic and English.

  His free time goes to football. Pezeshkian follows the Persian Gulf Pro League and often goes to matches in Tabriz with his son.

  625