Masoud Pezeshkian

Biography

Masoud Pezeshkian was born in Mahabad, in Iran's West Azerbaijan province, on 29 September 1954, to a family from Urmia; he speaks both Azeri and Kurdish. After military service in the 1970s he studied medicine at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences. During the Iran–Iraq War he organised medical teams at the front and treated soldiers, and after the war he trained as a surgeon, qualifying in cardiac surgery at Iran University of Medical Sciences in 1993. He headed Tabriz University of Medical Sciences from 1994 to 1999.

He entered national politics in 1997 as deputy health minister in Mohammad Khatami's government and was minister of health and medical education from 2001 to 2005, surviving an impeachment vote in parliament in 2003. From 2008 he represented Tabriz, Osku and Azarshahr in the Islamic Consultative Assembly through five terms, serving as first deputy speaker from 2016 to 2020.

Running as a reformist and a moderate, he won the 2024 presidential election in a run-off against Saeed Jalili and took office in July 2024, the oldest person to hold the post. His presidency has been dominated by confrontation with Israel, including the Twelve-Day War of June 2025, during which he survived an attempt on his life. After the killing of Ali Khamenei in February 2026 he sat on the interim leadership council until a new supreme leader was named, while the Revolutionary Guards increasingly sidelined his government on security matters.