After the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, Iranian lawmaker Masoud Pezeshkian wrote that it was “unacceptable in the Islamic Republic to arrest a girl for her hijab and then hand over her dead body to her family.” Days later, as nationwide protests and a bloody crackdown on all dissent took hold, he warned that those “insulting the supreme leader… will create nothing except long-lasting anger and hatred in the society.” The stances by Pezeshkian, now Iran’s 69-year-old president-elect, highlight the dualities of being a reformist politician within Iran’s Shiite theocracy — always pushing for change, but never radically challenging the system overseen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
