“The domestic political agenda of Iran will undergo certain changes following Iran’s presidential elections,” Vardan Voskanyan, Yerevan-based expert in Iranian studies, noted at a press conference on Monday.
In the expert’s words, although Iran’s Hassan Rouhani evidently won more votes in the last presidential election than during the previous elections, the Iranian citizens have growing expectations in regard to ensuring certain liberalization processes inside the country and achieving success in the economy sphere.
“The administration of president Rouhani successfully managed to implement almost all the points of the country’s foreign policy agenda in the past years. Iran has reached a nuclear agreement and increased its influence over almost all the countries of the Middle East. However its citizens still have expectations regarding the domestic policy,” the expert said.
Touching upon Iran’s foreign policy, Mr. Voskanyan said that it will not undergo significant changes.
“The Iranians have strengthened their position in the foreign world taking into account a number of important factors related to the elections, the most important of which are the high voter turnout, the highly competitive atmosphere and the absence of any post-election processes, since Iran’s relevant bodies had ensured free and transparent elections. In fact, the Iranian voters did not have any complaints over vote rigging. In this sense Rouhani will be in stronger positions during his second term of precedency, further strengthening Iran’s negotiating positions,” he noted.
According to the expert in the Iranian studies, this is a highly significant factor amid the new level of developments in the Middle East. Iran will be in far stronger positions.
In his words, it is not accidental that on the very day of Iran’s election U.S. president paid a visit to Saudi Arabia, one of Iran’s enemy states.
Vardan Voskanyan also noted that Iran will continue its involvement in Syria and Lebanon processes and will maintain influential leverages in the Arabian Peninsula and Yemen, continuing to ensure serious presence in Afghanistan developments.