Iran’s Presidential Elections and its Future Foreign and Domestic Policies
WATCH VIDEO OF THE EVENT BELOW
With only weeks left until Iran’s June 18 Presidential elections, campaigning will begin in earnest the last week of May. Elections in the Islamic Republic are neither free nor fair, but they are consequential. The Rouhani government put all of its eggs in the idea that reaching a nuclear deal with the West would pave the way for the country’s political and economic reintegration with the broader global community. Donald Trump’s exit from the Iran nuclear deal and imposition of “maximum pressure” effectively upended that strategy. Today, opinion polls indicate that the Iranian public’s enthusiasm for the elections is at an all-time low. Yet, the elections will likely have a profound impact on Iran’s future engagement – or lack thereof – with the United States and the West, on the durability of the nuclear deal, as well as on the internal struggle to move Iran into a more open and democratic direction.
Will Iran’s next President be a conservative or can the centrists and reformists unite once more to retain the presidency? What implications will a conservative victory have for US-Iran relations, nascent regional diplomacy with Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and Iran’s embattled civil society?
Join us on Wednesday, May 26 at 1:30 EDT to address these important questions.
The panel will include Human Rights Watch’s Tara Sepehri Far, Tehran-based journalist and documentary film-maker Reza Sayah, and prominent Iranian economist and political analyst Bijan Khajehpour. Trita Parsi, Quincy Institute’s Executive Vice President, will moderate the conversation.