Who is Ebrahim Raisi, the ultra-conservative cleric who becomes president of Iran

He was a “winning horse”. The name of Iran’s new president was revealed the same day the Council of Guardians, a 12-member body that selects potential candidates, announced last month that it was allowing the head of the judiciary to stand for election. Ibrahim Raisi, or Sayyid Ebrahim Raisol-Sadati, his full name, he had been designated as the one chosen by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The other six opponents didn’t stand a chance. The reformists this time did not present any prominent figures. They already have many electoral frustrations and uprisings crushed by the force of hundreds of dead. So, with Raisi in the presidency, Khamenei ends up tying his power and ensure that no reform is looming on the horizon of the Ayatollha regime.

Raisi, 60, is a hard line judge and a clergyman, Known for his role in the mass execution of thousands of prisoners in the late 1980s. During the short presidential campaign, he vowed to face “Poverty and corruption, humiliation and discrimination”. In this way, he equates the serious economic problems that the country is going through with “the pride” of the Islamic revolution of 1979 and of Shiite religious concepts.

In March 2019, Khamenei appointed Raisi as head of the Iranian judiciary. From there, he launched a “war against corruption” and against all dissent. The New York-based Center for Human Rights of Iran called on the international community to investigate Raisi for crimes against humanity, describing him as “The mainstay of a system that imprisons, tortures and kills people for daring to criticize state policies.” Iran’s president-elect is associated with a bloody series of political trials and executions in 1988, at the end of the war between Iran and Iraq. At the time, Raisi was a judge at the Revolutionary Court in Tehran, which purged opponents of die-hard Islamists. Amnesty International believes that more than 5,000 prisoners, mostly affiliated with the Iranian People’s Mojahedin dissident group, were executed on the orders of Raisi and three other judges.

Raisi, like Khamenei, was born in the city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran, and they shared years of study at the senior seminary in Qom city. It is an ultra-conservative clergyman with a harsh interpretation of Islamic jurisprudence as the basis of state and government. Although he does not have the status of Ayatolha, the highest rank within the Shiite branch of Islam. He claims his lineage dates back to the Prophet Muhammad, allowing him to wear a black turban. Since Khamenei became the most important figure in Iranian power, Risi has stood by his side as an adviser and confidant. This earned him a rapid rise on the revolutionary ladder. In 2016, he was appointed head of the politically and economically powerful Astan Quds Razavi foundation, which manages much of the oil trade, as well as agricultural and construction businesses. The foundation also operates the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, an important Shia pilgrimage site. Three years later, in 2019, Khamenei appointed him to head the justice system. As such, he led a fight against corruption and along the way, he overturned and tarnished the reputation of some of his main political opponents. The post also made him vice-president of another key institution: the Iranian Assembly of Experts, tasked with electing the next Supreme Leader upon the death of Khamenei, 82. Khamenei is raw has already chosen him as his successor and who supports him to leave him as much power as possible.

“With the rise of Raisi the control of the security services over power is reinforced in anticipation of a transition to a new supreme leader, and raises new questions about the popular legitimacy of the political system, ”wrote analyst Ali Reza Eshraghi of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Raisi relies on the “revolutionary apparatus” made up of different powers ranging from the Revolutionary Guards, who control hundreds of state and joint enterprises, to the merchants who control Tehran’s central bazaar. And he opposes foreign investment. When he surely assumes end opening reforms led in recent years by President Hassan Rouhani.

The foundations of Iranian international relations lie in its nuclear development and the relationship, in this regard, with the United States. Raisi is opposed to any kind of compromise with the West, but he will likely have to follow the directions of his boss, Khamenei, who is more inclined to take over the 2015 nuclear deal unilaterally abandoned three years later by Donald Trump. It is likely that in the next few months, with a different attitude from Joe Biden, negotiations resume. Although all experts agree that Iran is already very close to achieving sufficient production of enriched uranium for make nuclear weapons.

Domestically, the economic situation is very serious. With 82,000 dead and more than three million infected, the pandemic has hit Iranians very hard, especially the poorest. US sanctions do the rest. Inflation is over 50% per year and unemployment reaches 20%. Corruption is rampant. When the government raised the price of gasoline in November 2019, thousands of people took to the streets to protest in more than 100 cities. According to Amnesty International, in a few days, the security forces killed over 300 unarmed protesters.

Raisi has presented himself as “the only candidate who can end corruption”, but he has been with the organization for too many years. Iran’s Corrupt and Repressive Political Institutions. He himself is one of the officials sanctioned by the measures imposed by the United States and the funds he kept in a European bank have been confiscated. He also has a silent fight with some opponents within the Shia clerical branch. Particularly with the powerful Ayatollah Ali Sistani which marks the political line from the holy city of Najaf, Iraq.

Even though Raisi’s biggest challenge will be giving back some hope for the youngest that it is worth continuing to fight and vote, even if it is against them. “Every decade a new generation of Iranians concludes that their system is unlikely to be reformed at the ballot box. And what is dangerous is that when you lose hope that you can reform the system peacefully, you there is only one alternative, it is the uprising», Analyzes Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Ten years ago, the Islamic Republic had to make a decision similar to what the Soviet Union and China had to make in the 1970s: Giving priority to revolutionary ideology or privileging economic and national interests? The Chinese have prioritized economic interests over revolutionary ideology. And we have seen the path they have taken over the past decades. The Soviet Union clearly did not. And we have already seen what happened to them ”.

“At the moment, I am not sure that the Iranian system to be able to reformAdds analyst Sadjadpour in an interview with Foreign Policy magazine. “The Supreme Leader believes that really reforming the system – compromising revolutionary principles – would hasten their demise, as glasnost and perestroika accelerated the demise of the Soviet Union. So the system can only survive with continued repression.“

In this context, Raisi takes the presidency of Iran, one of the most complex countries to unravel, even more than China.

KEEP READING: