Pezeshkian replaced the ultraconservative Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in May.
During election campaigning, he had vowed to “fully” oppose police patrols enforcing the mandatory hijab headscarf, as well as easing long-standing internet restrictions.
Relations with the West
At his news conference, Pezeshkian briefly touched on other topics including Iran’s fraught relations with the United States and the 2015 nuclear deal.
“We do not want to fight with America if it respects our rights,” he said. “It is not us who are hostile (to the Americans). We have not built military bases around their country,” Pezeshkian added, referring to U.S. bases in the Gulf and in Iraq.
Iran and the United States have had no diplomatic relations since 1980, the year after the Islamic Revolution that toppled its Western-backed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.
‘Disarm Israel’
He also insisted on Iran’s right to maintain its missile program, which has drawn Western criticism, as a deterrent against its arch-foe Israel.
“They (the West) want us not to have missiles, that is fine, but you need to disarm Israel first,” he said, adding that otherwise “they can drop bombs on us whenever they want, like in Gaza.”
And roll over for Israel? Very convenient.
Iran agreed to the nuclear deal. America ripped up the agreement.
Trump ripped up the agreement***
When the two major parties have massively different diplomatic policies we have problems like this a lot.
It can also be good sometimes tho like when Jimmy Carter became president and started cracking down on the junta in Argentina and flying out victims and stuff.
That’s true, but also let me just say this.
Whenever the US does something bad, you can’t just blame it on the whole US, you have to look at the specific people responsible for it, right? But what about when another country, like Iran, for example, does something bad? Do we say, “Oh well obviously you can’t blame Iran in general for it?” Very rarely. Often, people go so far as to not only paint an entire government negatively off a bad action, but to paint and entire culture and people that way, going back even to previous, unrelated governments that governed previous generations, completely different structures doing completely different things. Post-9/11, you saw people painting the entire Muslim world as warlike religious fanatics, even going back to Mideval times. People sometimes fail to make a distinction between the USSR and modern Russia. And likewise in China, I’ve seen people before trying to argue that China is inherently domineering based on ancient history.
When we’re taught history in school, all of our country’s decisions are taught with the full context and perspective, we’re taught what people were concerned about and why they did it and who were the ones who actually did it, and the conclusion for bad stuff is that it was an unfortunate necessity, or a mistake, or the product of a few bad apples in an otherwise positive project.
You are right, of course, that it was Trump who pulled out of the deal. But I think it’s important to understand that that nuance is only really seen from the inside, that from the perspective of Iran, for example, it’s just the US being fickle, and that if we expect the world to be understanding of that sort of nuance to our government’s actions, it’s important to apply the same sort of nuance any time we look at the actions of other countries.
We do not apply the same generosity of isolating a president from country policy when it comes to Iranian presidents. But leaving Trump aside there are many other instances where America screwed over Iran.