Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s hard-line president, quickly rose through the ranks of the Islamic Republic, eventually positioning himself as a potential successor.r to Ali Khamenei, supreme chief.
Mr Raisi, whose fate remains uncertain after a helicopter crash on Sunday, failed to win the 2017 presidential election as the leading ultra-conservative candidate but was given the post of head of the judicial power of the Islamic Republic.
But when he ran for president again in 2021, he won easily — thanks in part to the disqualification of many viable opponents and moderate candidates.
Mr. Raisi, 63, lacked political experience. But his role as a member of the three-member “death committee” that decided the fate of political prisoners in 1988 helped him rise through the ranks, winning him the support of powerful figures among Iran’s theocratic leaders.
Thousands of political prisoners were executed that summer, as the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq drew to a close.
In 2019, the United States sanctioned Mr. Raisi, in part for this, as well as for his “administrative oversight” of executions of juvenile offenders and torture – “including amputations” – inflicted on prisoners in Iran.
After the bloody summer of 1988, Ayatollah Khomeini tasked Mr. Raisi with resolving several critical court cases. He was charged with carrying out “God’s decree” on cases blocked before the Supreme Judicial Council. Most of them ended up on the gallows.
A series of subsequent promotions led him to become the first deputy head of the judiciary in 2003 – becoming the second most powerful figure in Iran’s judiciary – a position he held for a decade.
It was in this capacity that he was tasked with investigating allegations of prisoner rape following the disputed 2009 presidential election. His group of investigators declared the claims false and baseless.
Mr. Raisi won Iran’s 2021 presidential election, a vote marked by the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.
Reinforced application
His victory brought all branches of power under the control of hardliners, after eight years during which the presidency was occupied by Hassan Rouhani, a pragmatist who concluded a nuclear deal with Washington.
He maintained his tough stance as president. A year after his election, he ordered authorities to step up enforcement of Iran’s “hijab and chastity law,” restricting women’s dress and behavior.
Within weeks, a young Iranian Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, died in detention after being arrested by the morality police for allegedly violating this law. The months of nationwide protests that followed posed one of the most serious challenges to Iran’s religious leaders since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
More than 500 people were killed and more than 22,000 arrested during the months of crackdown by morality police and security services that followed.
The protests, along with the failure to turn around Iran’s ailing economy – crippled by Western sanctions and mismanagement – may have diminished Mr Raisi’s popularity at home. But he retained the support of his mentor, the Supreme Guide, the most powerful man in Iran.
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