IRAN – Iran’s new president has been formally inaugurated by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, opening up the slim hope of improved relations with the west, less internal censorship and a fresh approach to the economy.

In a ceremony on Sunday marking the start of his four-year presidency, Masoud Pezeshkian said the Iranian people had voted for change and promised constructive engagement with the west, a step he regards as a precondition for Tehran curbing inflation and securing growth.

Elected in a runoff on 5 July on a turnout of 49.7%, Pezeshkian, a reformist, is expected to make a raft of cabinet appointments in the next few days, including a new foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi. In his first official act in office, Pezeshkian appointed Mohammad Reza Aref, 72, a reformist and close ally of the former president, as his first vice-president.

At the inauguration ceremony in Tehran attended by diplomats and Iran’s political elite, Khamenei, the man that sets the parameters of Iranian policy, said it would be a foreign policy priority to remain close to countries that had supported Iran during the period of sanctions. But he said he did not rule out closer relations with European powers if they modified their behaviour.

Khamenei, broadly an advocate of looking to the east for Iran’s partners, said many European powers had been “behaving badly to us” through the imposition of oil sales embargos and by launching fake attacks on human rights. He praised Pezeshkian as a deserving president, saying he was “wise, popular, honest and scholarly”. Pezeshkian, a medical surgeon, parliamentarian and briefly a health minister, has no intention of differing with Khamenei in public, knowing the supreme Leader is ideologically closer to conservatives such as Pezeshkian’s predecessor as president, Ebrahim Raisi…[+]