Iran Elections 2021: Ebrahim Raisi Set to Become President
Ebrahim Raisi has won Iran’s presidential election, following a race that was tightly controlled.
He thanked voters for their support, in a poll that was widely seen as being designed to favor him.
Ebrahim Raisi is Iran’s top judge and holds ultra-conservative views. He is under US sanctions and has been linked to past executions of political prisoners.
Iran’s president is the second-highest ranking official in the country, after the supreme leader.
Ebrahim Raisi will have significant influence over domestic policy and foreign affairs. But in Iran’s political system it is the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the top religious cleric, who has the final say on all state matters.
Ebrahim Raisi, 60, has thanked the supreme leader for “creating the ground… that all people play a role in the formation of the new government.”
Iran is run according to conservative Shia Islamic values, and there have been curbs on political freedoms since its Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Many Iranians saw this latest election as having been engineered for Ebrahim Raisi to win, and shunned the poll.
The cleric has served as a prosecutor for most of his career. He was appointed head of the judiciary in 2019, two years after he lost by a landslide to Hassan Rouhani in the last presidential election.
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Ebrahim Raisi has presented himself as the best person to fight corruption and solve Iran’s economic problems.
“Our people’s grievances over shortcomings are real,” he said as he cast his vote in Tehran.
He is fiercely loyal to Iran’s ruling clerics, and has even been seen as a possible successor to Ayatollah Khamenei as the country’s supreme leader.
Many Iranians and rights groups have pointed to Ebrahim Raisi’s role in the mass executions of political prisoners in the 1980s. He was one of four judges who oversaw death sentences for about 5,000 prisoners, according to Amnesty International.
“That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance and torture, is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran,” said Amnesty chief Agnès Callamard.
Iran has never acknowledged the mass executions and Ebrahim Raisi has never addressed the allegations about his role in them.
Amnesty also says that as head of the judiciary Ebrahim Raisi oversaw impunity for officials and security forces accused of killing protesters during unrest in 2019.
He has promised to ease unemployment and work to remove US sanctions that have contributed to economic hardship for ordinary Iranians and caused widespread discontent.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, signed in 2015, gave Iran relief from Western sanctions in return 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. Ebrahim Raisi was among the officials sanctioned.
Iran has responded by re-starting nuclear operations that were banned under the deal.
Talks aimed at resurrecting the deal are ongoing in Vienna, with President Joe Biden also keen to revive it. But both sides say the other must make the first move.