FPI / July 27, 2021
Geostrategy-Direct
Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-liner known to Iranians as an “executioner and imprisoner,” is set to take office as the Islamic Republic’s next president in August.
Raisi, who wears a black turban, which in Shia tradition means he claims descent from the Prophet Muhammad, is the only president-elect of Iran to have had sanctions imposed against him by the U.S. before taking office.
With the backing of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Knamenei, Raisi won Iran’s presidential election last month, defeating three other candidates in the first round with 72 percent of the vote.
Raisi had no significant competition in the June 18 election. Other candidates seen as possibly threatening to Raisi were not granted approval by the 12-member Guardian Council, which is required by Iran’s Constitution for a presidential run.
Many Iranians boycotted the vote in protest of the lack of serious candidates. Turnout was just 49 percent.
Jason Brodsky, a senior Middle East analyst at the London-based Iran International, told The Media Line that “Iranians know Ebrahim Raisi as an executioner and imprisoner. He is the first chief justice to assume Iran’s presidency, and there is great fear of the continued darkness that lies ahead.”
In 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Raisi, accusing him of overseeing the executions of juvenile offenders and of involvement in the violence that followed the Green Movement, a protest movement that opposed the results of the 2009 presidential election.
Trump also pulled the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and imposed sanctions on Iran that led to an economic downturn.
Raisi, who became deputy prosecutor in Teheran at age 25, was one of four judges on a committee that retried prisoners in jail for political crimes. Around 5,000 men and women were sentenced to death by what became known as the “Death Committee” and were buried in unmarked mass graves.
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