Political moderation has won a victory in Iran.

Cardiac surgeon and former health minister Masoud Pezeshkian defeated stalwart conservative Saeed Jalili in a presidential runoff election, by a margin of 16.3 million votes to 13.5 million votes.

Much of Pezeshkian’s platform centered on domestic issues such as loosening strictures regarding female dress. But he also called for engagement with the West in the interest of loosening sanctions against Iran — a contrast with Jalili’s message of self-reliance.

Pezeshkian was the only moderate reformist among the six candidates whom the hardliner-dominated Guardian Council had permitted to run in this election. Speculation will continue over why the council allowed even Pezeshkian to run. Probably it did so to stimulate voter turnout and thereby make the election appear more legitimate than it otherwise would have.

Pezeshkian did attract enough previously absentee voters — with a 50 percent turnout in the runoff, after only 40 percent voted in the first round — to offset the supporters of other conservative candidates who endorsed Jalili.

Downplaying by foreign observers of the importance of Iranian presidential elections inevitably begins by observing that the most powerful figure in Iran is not the president but rather the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. True, but this fact hardly equates to the choice of president being insignificant.

The Iranian president is a power center in his own right and has influence over a wide range of policy. The ideological orientations of past Iranian presidents, which have ranged from hardliner to reformist, have made visible differences in Tehran’s foreign policy.

Simple downplaying also ignores some of Khamenei’s own choices. The most significant product of engagement between the West and Iran in recent years — the 2015 Joint........

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