Ebrahim raisi

Ebrahim Raisi, the hardliner jurist-turned-president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, died in a plane crash over the weekend after coming back from a ceremony marking a new joint dam project with Azerbaijan. Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who was also on board, perished in the crash as well.  Few Iranians outside the political system will mourn their deaths. Raisi, for instance, was a notorious, unapologetic defender of the Iranian regime and first got involved in its machinations in his mid-twenties. In 1988, he served on a panel that handed down death sentences for thousands of dissidents.

‘Death to Khamenei. Death to the dictator.’ Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, is sworn in today against a backdrop of protest, the sound of chanting echoing in his ears, whether literally or figuratively. The chants are often about the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, but are also directed at the regime as a whole. ‘Clerics get lost’ is another favorite. Street demonstrations began three weeks ago in the province of Khuzestan but spread to many other places, including the capital, Tehran. People are angry about water shortages and the wretched, broken state of the economy. The question now is whether the protests will build and, if so, whether Raisi will live up to his terrifying reputation and crush them.

The US and other western countries are faced with a dilemma: how to bring to justice a man with the blood of thousands on his hands when you have to do business with him. Ebrahim Raisi’s path to the presidency of Iran is strewn with corpses. He comes to office this month already under American and European sanctions for the mass murder of prisoners in 1988. Some 5,000 may have been killed, though we can only guess at the true number of dead. It was a crime against humanity in the strict legal meaning of that term. At an earlier stage in his career, Raisi is said to have personally supervised the torture of dissidents, but in the 1988 case his responsibility was bureaucratic. He was a grim fanatic, eager to carry out orders. He was — and remains — Iran’s hanging judge.

The president is a placeholder for the people who really run the country. The elections were rigged. And most of the American media cheers along. No, not the United States: Iran. The peace-loving, centrifuge-spinning, flag-burning regime has a new president, Ebrahim Raisi. The Biden administration did promise us a new era in US-Iranian relations, and here it is: Raisi will be the first Iranian president to take office while under sanctions for mass murder. In the 1980s, Raisi was a young regional prosecutor. He was part of a four-man ‘death committee’ which ordered the disappearance and killing of thousands of the Islamic revolution’s enemies. You may be shocked to hear human rights’ groups claiming that due process was frequently ignored during this judicial massacre.