Turkey sees opportunity in Iran-West faceoff under Raisi
Raisi’s hard-line approach may further sharpen disagreements between Ankara and Tehran over Syria and Iraq, but Ankara also sees new opportunities under the new Iranian leadership.
Turkey-Iran relations are laden with risk but also new opportunities under the administration of Iran’s newly inaugurated president, Ebrahim Raisi — a hard-liner with close ties with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the country's establishment.
In Iran, the supreme leader and Supreme National Security Council has always been influential in the country’s foreign and security policies. Thus, the presidential transition, which has seen the moderate Hassan Rouhani succeeded by the conservative Raisi, might not bring radical changes in foreign policy. Tehran’s ties with Ankara will maintain their importance as long as Western-led isolation policy and sanctions against Iran remain intact — a situation that helps keep Ankara-Tehran ties at a manageable level, despite some ongoing disagreements.
Although Raisi has yet made a public comment vis-a-vis Tehran’s relations with Ankara, Iranian establishment’s preferences will likely play a major role in shaping the foreign policy of Raisi, who has limited experience in the field. Khamenei's praises of the new president; the pledge of Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, to cooperate with the new Iranian administration; and Raisi’s promise to form a “revolutionary government” indicate that the new president already embraces the Iranian hard-line establishment choices.
Experts say they believe the Iranian civilian bureaucracy advocating the normalization of Tehran’s ties with the West will likely lose its influence under Raisi’s rule. Although the supreme leader has always had the final word over the country’s foreign and security policies, Rouhani was able to pursue a dual-track diplomacy balancing the role of the hard-liners. Rouhani’s “strategic patience” policy aiming to counter the US "maximum pressure" policy was already abandoned before Raisi’s election. In other words, the Khamenei-led Iranian establishment opened the way for Raisi’s election victory by openly endorsing him in a bid to eliminate the dichotomy between the supreme leader and the presidency.
