After seven weeks in office, how is Iran’s President Pezeshkian faring?

Tehran, Iran – Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has now been in office for a month and a half in one of the most eventful and tumultuous starting periods for a president since the country’s 1979 revolution.

Over the past seven weeks, Iran has grappled with rising tensions with Israel — including considering a retaliatory strike — amid continuing efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza. Pezeshkian has also faced a series of domestic political challenges.

The president told local and foreign journalists during his first news conference on Monday that the world must stop the “genocide” Israel is perpetrating in Gaza while advocating unity among the Muslim world and denying sending hypersonic ballistic missiles to Yemen’s Houthis a day after they landed one of the projectiles in central Israel.

Here’s a rundown on how Pezeshkian has fared so far:

Hours after Pezeshkian held up the hand of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh during his inauguration at the Iranian parliament, Haniyeh was assassinated by a missile in northern Tehran on July 31.

The president and other top political and military authorities have blamed Israel and promised to avenge the Palestinian leader, but they have so far refrained from a counterstrike amid concerns that a large-scale Iranian response could lead to an all-out regional war.

Iran has also said it will calibrate and time its retaliation in a way that would not jeopardise prospects of a Gaza ceasefire. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is increasingly seen, even by some segments in Israeli society, as an obstacle to peace, and he recently faced Israel’s largest antigovernment protests since October. Yet Netanyahu and some of his allies have tried to blame Hamas and Iran’s other allies, including Hezbollah and the Houthis, for regional tensions.

The president embarked on his first foreign trip last week, visiting top officials in neighbouring Iraq’s Baghdad and Erbil. He will travel to New York this month to address the United Nations General Assembly.

Pezeshkian has otherwise been focused on domestic politics, where he can claim a key win — his entire list of cabinet ministers was approved by parliament, a first since 2001, although that success came with controversies.