Does hard-line front-runner for Iran's president have foreign policy plan?
Although Ebrahim Raisi has been generally mum about his potential foreign policy focus, some recent comments offer clues to the approach his administration could take if he wins the elections June 18.
With Iran's June 18 presidential election just days away, observers in Iran and abroad are considering the potential agenda and priorities of the next administration. Yet analyzing the possible foreign policy of Ebrahim Raisi — the judiciary chief who is the front-runner in the presidential race — is no easy task, as he has usually shied away from talking about it. The hard-line Iranian cleric did, however, address foreign policy June 12 during the third and final presidential debate.
"Let’s make it clear. We would definitely abide by the JCPOA in the format that was approved with nine clauses by the Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei], as it a contract and a commitment that governments must abide by," he said, using the abbreviation for the formal name of the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
These remarks by the Principlist presidential candidate come at a time when hard-liners and the political front he belongs to have consistently opposed nuclear talks and reprimanded the current administration for holding talks with the United States and the West on Iran's nuclear program over the past eight years, since President Hassan Rouhani took office in 2013.
That is not all. Later in the presidential debate, Raisi seemed to be distancing himself from other hard-line candidates who opposed legislation to bring Iran into compliance with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a Paris-based money laundering watchdog. Passing these bills is needed for Tehran to establish international banking ties.
