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.”
Except that Iran isn’t a democracy in practice or really by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe in the 80s, but when a country has a leader with complete and total authority, it really doesn’t matter.
We blame Putin for the actions of Russia bc he has supreme authority over Russia. We cannot blame a single president for the same, as 1, they don’t have supreme authority in most matters, and 2, unlike Russia the US is actually a representative democracy, whether or not you like the options available.
In essence, I disagree with the premise that this is the norm. It’s not only visible from the inside. If people don’t care enough to find out, that’s a different problem, but in general, diplomatic officials tend to know abt this kind of stuff because it’s their job to.
Whether a country is democratic or not doesn’t really have anything to do with it. Every country, including non-democratic ones, has different factions and inner workings.
Is this a typo? You just said that Trump was responsible for pulling out of the Iran deal, which is true, and which he had the power to do unilaterally.
Nuance. Trump did have that power. He did not, by any means, have power over the entirety of US policy. The fact that the Republicans had significant congressional control also gave him, but actually them, more overall power, but still not absolute by any sense of the imagination. Absolutely every country has different factions and inner workings, but in countries where there is a supreme authority, those are by and large null and void. The US does not have any one supreme authority (except money maybe lol)
I’m basically saying that we can only blame the people that had the power and that took the action in question, or, alternatively, the people with power over them.
That’s not true. Even in dictatorships, the person at the top still has people who they need to keep happy in order to stay in power. Nobody gets to or stays at the top on their own, what happens is that they’re supported in that position by whatever interests they represent. If someone comes to power in a military coup, for instance, they have to keep the military happy or they’ll get replaced.
More to the point, it’s not just about who gets blame or credit for stuff, it’s about understanding the mechanics of a system, and the history, and the various material factors and interests that go into decision making.