Khamenei To Install Hand-Picked Candidate Raisi As President

(New York, N.Y.) — On Tuesday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini will officially confirm ultraconservative Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Raisi as president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, further entrenching hardline control over all of Iran’s key levers of power. Hand-picked by Khameini and with all viable ideological rivals disqualified from running, Raisi won with record-low turnout as Iranians signaled their discontent with the rigged election. Raisi inherits responsibility for cascading economic, public health, and environmental crises created by the ruling regime’s endemic corruption and mismanagement. Raisi’s presidency promises more of the same, as he favors the path of continued and escalating violations of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), support for terrorist organizations, and the regime’s deepening relations with the Chinese Communist Party.

His accession to the presidency comes amid the opening of a war crimes trial in Sweden of a former Iranian official for his role in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988. Those crimes were directed by a “death commission” established after the end of the Iran-Iraq War. Raisi was a key member of that committee, which the U.S. Treasury Department cited in designating Raisi in 2019.

Ebrahim Raisi has steadily risen through the ranks of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Spending most of his career in the judiciary, serial human rights abuser Raisi has been at the forefront of the regime’s worst excesses. Three factors can explain Raisi’s ascendance: promotion by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an influential family network, and a knack for leveraging state positions to feed his ambition. Raisi has spent his career developing his image as an anti-corruption crusader – a selective crusade that does not target his close allies. By staying home in droves, Iranians demonstrated that they see Raisi for who he really is: a dutiful henchman committed to preserving the Islamic Republic’s theocratic, dictatorial regime at any cost.

To read the UANI resource Ebrahim Raisi: President of Iran, please click here.

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