Masoud Pezeshkian

Masoud Pezeshkian was Born on 29 September 1954 in Mahabad, West Azerbaijan province, to an Azerbaijani father and Kurdish mother. He trained as a cardiac surgeon and served as Health Minister under Khatami (2001-2005) before representing Tabriz in Parliament across multiple terms. Elected president in July 2024 as a reformist backed by Khatami and Zarif factions, he ran on a platform of Western re-engagement and sanctions relief. Pezeshkian holds no constitutional command authority over the IRGC, which answers to the Supreme Leader, not the president. When US-Israeli strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on 28 February 2026, Pezeshkian was placed on Iran's three-member Article 111 Interim Leadership Council alongside Ayatollah Alireza Arafi and Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei.

His televised 8 March order to halt Gulf strikes was ignored by the IRGC within hours. Mojtaba Khamenei was installed as Supreme Leader on 7 March, but with Mojtaba incapacitated by severe injuries, an IRGC military council led by Ahmad Vahidi blocked Pezeshkian's ministerial appointments and refused his meeting requests from early April. Pezeshkian's wartime role is civilian legitimacy cover for a state the IRGC operationally governs. Foreign Minister Araghchi's Foreign Ministry was reading a US peace text on 7-8 May at the same hour the IRGC fired on US guided-missile destroyers in Hormuz, the command gap made concrete. By late May, Iran's. The event record includes and .