Iran’s presidential election comes after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent war on the militants in the Gaza Strip, which only added jet fuel to a fire now threatening to burn nearly every corner of the wider Middle East
In the waning moments of Iran’s final televised presidential debate, one of the top candidates to replace the late hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi invoked the name of the one person who perhaps has done more than anyone to change the trajectory of the Islamic Republic’s relationship with the wider world in recent years.
The next president could be “forced to either sell Iran to Trump or spark a dangerous tension in the country” if economic problems aren’t solved, warned Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker and a candidate in Friday’s election.
President Donald Trump’s decision in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw America from the Iran nuclear deal saw crushing sanctions reimposed and largely cut Tehran out of the world’s economy. That worsened the political climate within Iran, already beset by mass protests over economic problems and women’s rights. An escalating series of attacks on land and at sea followed, while Tehran also began enriching uranium at near weapons-grade levels.
Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent war on the militants in the Gaza Strip only added jet fuel to a fire now threatening to burn nearly every corner of the wider Middle East. Iran’s support of an array of militias, including Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and its unprecedented direct attack on Israel during the war, has made it a direct belligerent in the conflict.
What happens in both the war and with Iran’s future may hinge directly on the U.S., denounced by the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the “Great Satan” in the 1979 Islamic Revolution and still cursed at major events like a speech this week by the 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Despite the vitriol, the U.
