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Ebrahim Raisi, who has died aged 63, rose from ruthless prosecutor to uncompromising president in Iran’s theocracy, leading a crackdown on protests in the country and taking a tough stance in nuclear talks with world powers to position himself as the next supreme leader.
A senior Iranian official said Raisi’s helicopter crashed in a mountainous area as he was returning from an event near the Azerbaijan border, killing all on board. Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian was among the dead.
Elected president in a controlled election in 2021.
Raisi, who was elected president in a tightly controlled election in 2021, has taken a hard line in nuclear negotiations, seeing a chance to win major U.S. concessions on sanctions in exchange for modest limits on Iran’s increasingly advanced nuclear technology.
Iranian hardliners have been encouraged by the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from neighboring Afghanistan and policy changes in Washington.
In 2018, then-U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the six-nation deal reached with Tehran and restored crippling U.S. sanctions on Iran, leading Tehran to gradually abandon the deal’s nuclear restrictions.
Indirect negotiations between Tehran and the US governmentPresident Joe Biden’s efforts to revive the deal have stalled.
Strict laws on women’s dress, chastity, headscarves
Raisi’s hardline views are also evident in domestic politics. A year after the election, the mid-level cleric ordered stricter enforcement of Iran’s headscarf and chastity laws, which restrict how women dress and behave.
Within weeks, a young Iranian Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, was arrested by riot police for allegedly violating the law and died in custody.
The ensuing months of nationwide protests presented Iran’s clerical rulers with one of the biggest challenges since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Hundreds of people have been killed, including dozens of security forces involved in the crackdown on protesters, according to human rights groups. “The chaos is unacceptable,” the president said.
Although Raisi is a political novice, his tough stance on the nuclear issue and crackdown on protesters has the full support of his patron, the anti-Western Supreme Leader Khamenei.
Khamenei, not the president, has the final say on all major policies in Iran’s dual political system, which is divided between the clergy and the government.
He will become the supreme leader
But Raisi’s victory in the election after a watchdog disqualified influential conservative and moderate rivals put all of Iran’s government ministries under the control of hardliners loyal to Khamenei and boosted his chances of one day succeeding him as supreme leader.
Still, widespread protests against clerical rule and a failure to jump-start Iran’s economy under pressure from Western sanctions and mismanagement may have dented his support at home.
In the late 1980s, he oversaw the mass execution of hundreds of political prisoners
In 1988, as Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq was coming to an end, Raisi was a young prosecutor in Tehran who was part of a team that oversaw the executions of hundreds of political prisoners in the capital, human rights groups said.
An Amnesty International report said investigative bodies known as “death committees” made up of religious judges, prosecutors and departmental intelligence officers have been set up across Iran to decide the fate of thousands of prisoners through arbitrary trials lasting just a few minutes.
Although the number of people killed in this way across Iran has never been confirmed, Amnesty International says it is estimated to be at least 5,000.
“If judges and prosecutors keep people safe, they should be commended… I’m proud to defend human rights in every position I’ve held to date,” Lacey told reporters in 2021 when asked about allegations that he played a role in those death sentences.
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Raisi rose through the ranks of Iran’s Shia Muslim clergy and was appointed justice minister by Khamenei in 2019. Soon after, he was chosen as deputy chairman of the 88-member Council of Experts charged with selecting the next supreme leader.
– Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), said Raisi was a pillar of a system that jails, tortures and kills people for daring to criticize state policies.
Iran denies mistreating prisoners.
Raisi shares Khamenei’s deep suspicion of the West. An anti-corruption populist, he supports Khamenei’s strategy of promoting economic self-sufficiency and supporting allied forces throughout the Middle East.
When a missile attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus killed a senior Revolutionary Guard official last month, Iran responded with an unprecedented but largely unsuccessful direct aerial bombardment of Israel.
Lacey said any Israeli retaliation against Iranian territory could lead to the “destruction of the Zionist regime.”
Human rights violations and executions
Five years later, the United States imposed sanctions on him for human rights violations, including his execution in the 1980s.
Raisi lost the 2017 election to the more pragmatic Hassan Rouhani. His defeat was widely attributed to a 1988 audiotape that emerged in 2016 purporting to reveal his role in the 1988 executions.
In the video, the late Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, then deputy supreme leader, whose son is in jail for leaking the tapes, spoke about the murders.
Lacy was born in 1960 into a religious family in the holy city of Mashhad, Iran, for Shia Muslims. He lost his father when he was five. Nevertheless, he followed in his footsteps and became a priest.
As a young student at a religious seminary in the holy city of Komu, Lacy took part in the 1979 revolutionary protests against the Western-backed king.
Later, his contacts with the religious leaders of Kom made him a trusted figure in judicial circles.
Daily News
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