Who Is Ibrahim Raisi, Iran’s New President?

In 2021 Ibrahim Raisi won the Presidential elections for Iran, waiting to take office in August after President Hassan Rouhani leaves his post, and presenting himself as the best person to combat corruption and solve the economic problems Iran is living through.

Raisi is an ultra-conservative prominent figure in Iran’s political landscape, since 2006 Raisi was a member in the Assembly of Experts, and in 2017 Raisi ran for presidency, but he didn’t win back then. He’s also the head of the country's judiciary.

He always wears a black turban identifying him in Shia tradition as a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. His strict religious commitments make him a candidate successor of the 82-year old Khamenei.

Early Life

Raisi was born in Mashhad, Iran’s second biggest city, in 1960, his father was a cleric and eventually he followed his father's footsteps and started attending a seminary in the holy city of Qom at the age of 15. There, he studied under several prominent scholars, including Khamenei.

When he entered the influential seminary in Qom just years before the 1979 revolution that brought about the Islamic Republic, many Iranians were dissatisfied with the governance of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was ultimately deposed. in 1979 in an Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Following the revolution, Raisi joined the prosecutor’s office in Masjed Soleyman in southwestern Iran. Over the next six years, he added to his experience as a prosecutor in several other jurisdictions.

Accuses of Massacre

A crucial development came when he moved to Iran’s capital, Tehran, in 1985 after being appointed deputy prosecutor.

While in that position he served as one of four judges who sat on secret tribunals set up in 1988 that came to be known as the "Death Committee". 

The committee oversaw the secret execution of thousands of political prisoners in the summer of 1988, described by eminent historian Ervand Abrahamian as “an act of violence unprecedented in Iranian history—unprecedented in form, content, and intensity.”

The tribunals "re-tried" thousands of prisoners already serving jail sentences for their political activities. Most were members of the leftist opposition group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), also known as the People's Mujahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI).

Courtesy of an audio recording that first went viral in August 2016, many Iranians now associate Raisi with this dark chapter of their country’s history.

In the infamous tape, Raisi is heard as he haggles with Montazeri, deputy supreme leader at the time, to obtain permission for the execution of 200 additional prisoners.

Leaders of the Islamic Republic do not deny that the executions happened, but they do not discuss details and the legality of the individual cases.

Raisi has repeatedly denied his role in the death sentences. But he has also said they were justified because of a fatwa, or religious ruling, by former supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

Nuclear Deal

The British newspaper “The Guardian” says that Raisi "enjoys the confidence of the security establishment and is a loyal guardian of the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei), and there is speculation that the 82-year-old considers the head of the (former) judiciary his successor."

The newspaper said: "In the long run, the (Iranian) leadership recognizes that it must build domestic support and that the only hope for Iran's shattered economy is to revive the JCPOA. But the United States and Europe must decide what to do about the experience and assets Iran has gained through non-compliance since the U.S. withdrawal, while Trump has left Tehran with less faith in U.S. promises."

Optimists hope that "a more unified Iranian leadership will facilitate the implementation of the deal," the paper notes. Pessimists say hardliners will find it more difficult to reach a settlement, and that there is less hope for a deal."

Hamed Mousavi, a political science professor at Tehran University, said to Al-Jazeera English that the narrative among conservatives has been that mismanagement by the Rouhani government led to the current situation.

“So according to this narrative, if this mismanagement is fixed then the economy will be fixed but I do think that many conservatives at least internally understand how important the sanctions are,” he told Al Jazeera.

“I think this will go back to how much Raisi will show flexibility in the negotiations. One important point is who he will appoint for the nuclear negotiations.”

Foreign Policy

Hassan Haradan, in the Lebanese     newspaper “Al-Benaa”, monitors what he sees as the results of a major victory, saying that this will "strengthen Iran's international alliances, particularly with Russia and China... As a common interest in confronting western American hegemony policies."

The election of a conservative president of Iran "reinforces its independence orientation and consistent and principled positions on conflict issues in the region," he said, and will "strengthen and increase Iran's support for the resistance forces."

This, he adds, will also "speed up the agreement of Washington and Western capitals to return to the nuclear deal and lift sanctions on Iran without any amendment to the agreement."

According to the author, a major victory was a "shock in the decision-making circles" of the United States and Israel, and dealt a "strong blow to the Western countries led by the United States of America and the countries in their orbit."

Pessimism

Bassam Rubin warned, in London's “Al-Youm” newspaper, that this development in Iran, "could lead the region towards a difficult geo-military landscape that may ignite it and lead to the end of its dream of Israel in an all-out war in which Arabs and Muslims come together to end an era of occupation and arrogance."

He also calls on Arabs to "capture the message of the conservatives' victory wisely, and to realize the seriousness and meaning of this transformation and that confronting it cannot be by trenching with occupied Israel or America.... "It is through rapprochement with the Islamic axis to form a new resistance front that will confront colonial projects."

"The countries of the region will have to expect the worst in the next few years, and the outcome of the Vienna negotiations will increase the ferocity and violence of the Iranian regime," said Abdullah al-Otaibi, in London's “Middle East”.

"Tehran will ask its instruments in the region to take direct control of the countries in which they operate," he said.

"Any gain Iran will gain in nuclear negotiations, or other engagements with the outside world, will not lead them to flexibility or abandon their passion for influence and regional expansion," says Sameh Rashid, in London's “Al-Arabi Al-Jadid”. 

He said: “On the contrary, it will only increase external greed and regional brutality. Ibrahim's presence at the Iranian presidency closes the door to optimism about any positive shift in Iran's foreign policies, particularly regional ones."