Hardliner Ebrahim Raisi has won Iran’s presidential election in a very race that was widely seen as being designed to favor him. He thanked Iranians for his or their support, after securing 62% of the votes. Mr. Raisi is Iran’s top judge and holds ultra-conservative views. he‘s under US sanctions and has been linked to past executions of political prisoners. Iran’s president is that the second-highest-ranking official within the country, after the supreme leader. Mr. Raisi is going to be inaugurated in early August and can have significant influence over domestic policy and foreign affairs. But in Iran’s form of government, it’s the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest religious cleric, who has the ultimate say on all state matters. Iran is run in line with conservative Shia Islamic values, and there are curbs on political freedoms since its Islamic Revolution in 1979. Many Iranians saw this latest election as having been engineered for Mr. Raisi to win and shunned the poll. Official figures showed numerical quantity was all-time low ever for a presidential election, at 48.8%, compared to over 70% for the previous pick out 2017. Who is Ebrahim Raisi? The 60-year-old cleric has served as a prosecutor for many of his career. From an early age, Mr. Raisi held powerful and high-ranking positions – when he was just 20 years old, he was already serving because of the chief prosecutor of the town of Karaj. He was appointed head of the judiciary in 2019, two years after he lost by a landslide to Hassan Rouhani within the last presidential election. Mr. Raisi has presented himself because the best person to fight corruption and inequality, and solve Iran’s economic problems. “Our people’s grievances over shortcomings are real,” he said as he cast his take on Tehran. The man who wears a black turban identifying him in Shia tradition as a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad is fiercely loyal to Iran’s ruling clerics and has even been seen as a possible successor to Ayatollah Khamenei. But many Iranians and rights groups have pointed to Mr. Raisi‘s alleged role within the mass executions of political prisoners in 1988 when he was 27 years old. He is said to own been a part of a so-called “death committee” – one amongst four judges who oversaw secret death sentences for about 5,000 prisoners in jails near Tehran, per Amnesty International. It says the situation of the mass graves where the lads and girls were buried is being “systematically concealed by the Iranian authorities”. “That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency rather than being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance and torture, could be a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran,” said Amnesty chief Agnès Callamard. Mr. Raisi has repeatedly denied his role within the death sentence. But he has also said they have justified thanks to a fatwa, or religious ruling, by former supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Amnesty also says that as head of the judiciary Mr. Raisi oversaw impunity for officials and security forces accused of killing protesters during unrest in 2019. What does his win mean for Iran and therefore the world? Mr. Raisi has promised to ease unemployment and work to get rid of US sanctions that have contributed to economic hardship for ordinary Iranians and caused widespread discontent. BBC Persian correspondent Kasra Naji adds that under Mr. Raisi, Iran’s hardliners will seek to bolster a puritanical system of Islamic government, possibly meaning more controls on social activities, fewer freedoms, and jobs for ladies, and tighter control of social media and therefore the press. The hardliners are suspicious of the West, but both Mr. Raisi and Supreme Leader Khamenei favor a return to a global deal on Iran’s nuclear activity. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, signed in 2015, gave Iran relief from Western sanctions reciprocally for limiting its nuclear activities. The US pulled out of the deal in 2018, and President Trump’s administration re-imposed crippling limits on Iran’s ability to trade. Mr. Raisi was among the officials anesthetize sanctions. Iran has responded by re-starting nuclear operations that were banned under the deal. Talks aimed toward resurrecting the deal are ongoing in Vienna, with President Joe Biden also keen to revive it. But each side says the opposite must make the primary move.
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