In the second round of the presidential election last Friday (5 July), Masoud Pezeshkian was elected president with more than fifty-three per cent of the vote. At the time of writing, he may have formed his cabinet. The election process, which began in accordance with the Iranian constitution after the deaths of former President Raisi and Foreign Minister Abdullahiyan in a helicopter crash, ended in a very transparefnt and colourful manner and, as is often the case, between two candidates, the so-called conservative and the reformist. And the ‘reformist’ candidate, Pezeshkiyan, took the lead.
In short, there is nothing strange, incomprehensible or anything that would provide extraordinary material for the conspiracy theorists in our country, because it is not the first time that a so-called reformist candidate has been elected president. First Mohammad Khatami between 1997 and 2005 and then Hassan Rouhani (2013-2021) were elected for two terms each. Indeed, I still remember the first time I visited Iran, when Khatami’s foreign minister, Kemal Kharazi, graciously received me and we talked about the adjustments they were trying to make in Iran’s foreign policy, their desire to improve their relations with Turkey and Egypt in particular, and how important it was/would be for these three major countries of the Middle East to come together and establish a mechanism for political dialogue.
Why did we need so many conspiracy theories?
More precisely, what or who were the conspiracy theories about the deaths of Raisi and Abdullahiyan, which were broadcast for days on Turkish television, supposed to explain or analyse (!)? It is obvious that dealing with this question will not contribute to a better understanding of Turkey-Iran relations or shed light on how the foreign policy of a reformist president will be shaped, especially with regard to our region; however, it is of some importance in terms of deciphering the conspiratorial mindset in Turkey.
According to the conspiracy theories produced at the time and presented with mysterious words and writings, this could not have been a coincidence. Why was/is a great president on board such an old model helicopter? The same helicopters had been used by previous conservative or reformist presidents. What could have happened? But it was not so, or it should not have been so simple. According to our conspiracy theorists, Khamenei, the religious leader, should have done it through the Revolutionary Guard Corps, probably to establish a repressive regime.
But Raisi and Abdullahiyan, as representatives of the conservative wing, were closer to the religious leader within the Iranian system. From the beginning, Raisi ran as the religious leader’s candidate, won, became president, but now he had set his sights on replacing the old religious leader. So he had to be removed, and this was done because the Supreme Leader was in favour of replacing him with his son. But according to the Iranian constitution, his son was not even a member of the council that would elect the religious leader. Moreover, under the Iranian constitution, it was neither possible nor likely to establish a more repressive regime or to appoint anyone as a possible religious leader. As a result, the reformist candidate won the presidential election to replace the conservative Ayatollah Khamenei.
Conspiracy theories in Turkey-Iran relations
Conspiracy theorists and theorists continue their efforts to create obstacles in the development of Turkey-Iran relations, as they do in many other issues, with their theses that seem logical at first glance but fall apart when analysed with a little knowledge. Recently, they frothed and frothed over the news (!) of an American magazine. Middle East Eye magazine wrote that Iran had supplied dozens of advanced drones, anti-tank and other weapons and their ammunition to the PKK/PYD. And the conspiracy theorists in Turkey suddenly jumped on this and tried to explain that Iran was against us in Syria. They were probably trying to prevent the coming Turkish-Syrian reconciliation.
Neither Turkish nor other security sources confirmed the news, but this propaganda was widely spread, especially on social media and in some pro-government newspapers. Under the current circumstances, there is/can be no logical explanation as to why Iran, which is engaged in a tit-for-tat struggle with the US and Israel, would take such an action that would bring it into immediate confrontation with Turkey. But for the conspiracy theorists, this does not matter.
Ankara-Tehran relations in the new era
Aside from this, there is no reason why relations between Turkey and Iran should not continue to improve in the Pezeshkian era. If the normalisation process on Syria, which is expected to start with the messages from President Erdoğan and Syrian President Assad, develops as quickly as hoped, there is no doubt that this will have an additional positive impact on Ankara-Tehran relations. After all, Iran, like Russia, wants the war in Syria to reach a diplomatic conclusion that confirms the Damascus government’s success/victory. It may even want to be as active as Russia in the Turkey-Syria normalisation process. There should be no significant problem in terms of our national interests. After all, Iran and I are participating together in the Astana platform, which aims to bring peace to Syria.
Some of the news (!) about Iran, most of which is speculative and even manipulative, is related to the Zangezur corridor. In fact, at this point in time, there were (were) some partial truths that could be attributed to the news. For example, at the beginning of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War (September-October 2020), the then reformist Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, as if he did not want Azerbaijan to succeed, called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a return to the pre-war situation in statements on his social media account. However, when he realised that this would not be the case, and especially when he realised that Russia, due to its close relations with Turkey, would not be fully committed even if it helped Armenia, he gradually changed his position and showed his acceptance of the new situation, which resulted in Azerbaijan’s overwhelming and decisive victory.
The conservative leadership of Raisi-Abdollahian, which at first made statements as if it would not accept the new situation created by the Second Karabakh War, after a while, when it realised that Moscow did not agree with it on this issue, finally changed its demands to opposition to the violent opening of the Zangezur corridor and thus the elimination of the territorial border between Armenia and Iran.
This problem was largely solved by the Azerbaijani operation in the summer of 2023, when the extremist groups in Armenia that were trying to undermine Pashinyan’s peace initiatives were expelled from Karabakh by Azerbaijani forces. What remains is the signing of a peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia and, as part of this, the opening of the Zangezur corridor through Armenia’s sovereign territory, to which Tehran cannot be expected to object. Indeed, it has repeatedly stated that it does not. Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash, posed for the cameras at the inauguration of a bridge on the border between the two states, which had not been used in recent years because of the Armenian occupation.
Iran and relations with the West
Can a reformist president and his cabinet make a significant difference in Iran’s relations with the West, especially now? In the previous period, President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif seemed to have made a significant difference by signing the so-called nuclear deal (2015) after long negotiations with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France – and Germany. However, the unilateral withdrawal of the United States under Trump, forced by Netanyahu, the inability of the other five countries, which had strongly opposed it, to develop an alternative policy, and Iran’s enrichment of uranium for nuclear weapons, which rightly responded to all this, reversed the whole process.
It is unlikely that the Pezeshkian government will be able to take steps that will lead to significant policy changes in the eyes of the US and the West on this issue. The fact that Iran has acted as an ally of Russia since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, which marked the beginning of the multipolar world system, rules out such a possibility. Moreover, it is unlikely that any American administration would want to open a new page with Iran without the consent of Israel, which has been carrying out a genocidal ethnic cleansing in Gaza for almost ten months.
Under these circumstances, what remains is a scenario of war with Iran, in which a Trump administration that might come to the White House would likely wage a war against Iran together with Israel. If Trump, who is likely to end the war in Ukraine by not supporting the war in Ukraine, wants to get the support of the Israel lobby against the American deep state – which was clearly the reason for many of the steps he took in favour of Israel in his first term – could he turn to such a policy?
Such a scenario, which would shake everything in the Middle East, could be the result of a possible war between Israel and Hezbollah, even before Trump’s arrival. In all these scenarios, the likelihood of the new President Pezeshkian making sweeping policy changes is virtually zero, since there is no Western world to respond to such initiatives, nor are these areas for him alone to decide. In any case, he will have to act in concert with Supreme Leader Khamenei. Therefore, it seems that Iran will continue to oscillate between its active policy against Israel through its support for the Axis of Resistance forces on the one hand, and its policy of avoiding direct war on the other, based on the correct assumption that time is working in its favour.
