Ultra-conservative President Ebrahim Raisí died in a helicopter accident after a presidency and a judicial career marked by ultra-conservative orthodoxy that provoked feminist protests of “life, women, freedom” and the intensification of repression in the Islamic Republic.
The rescue teams located this Monday the helicopter in which Raisí and his companions were traveling, after hours of an extensive search in the mountains of the Varzeqan area, in the province of East Azerbaijan, where he disappeared a day earlier. Flying with Raisi on the aircraft were the Iranian Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir Abdolahian, the governor of East Azerbaijan, Malik Rahmati, and the leader of Friday prayers in the city of Tabriz, Mohammad-Ali Al-Hashem, as well as an unknown number of crew members.
With his black turban, beard and serious face, the 63-year-old cleric was a man of the Islamic Republic’s establishment, as a judge and president, and was considered a protégé of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. In fact, he was among the favorites to succeed Khamenei, 85 years old.
Raisí assumed the presidency in 2021 after the elections with the lowest participation in the history of the Islamic Republic – 48.8% -, marked by the veto of presidential candidates, which paved the way for him. This was his second assault on the Presidency. He presented his candidacy in 2017 and obtained 38% of the votes, behind the moderate cleric Hasan Rohaní (2013-2021).
If during the electoral campaign he tried to soften his ultra-conservative image, once his mandate began there were few doubts about his character. A character that led her Government to intensify the policies of wearing the mandatory Islamic veil, which had been relaxed in recent years, and which led to the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022 after being arrested for not wearing the hijab properly. .
The death of the 22-year-old sparked the largest protests in years against the Islamic Republic and they only disappeared after a police crackdown in which 500 people died and eight people were hanged, one of them in public. The repression against artists, filmmakers, athletes or women critical of the Islamic Republic has continued until now as they continue with the recent arrests of women for not wearing a veil or the death sentences against rappers like Tomaj Salehi for supporting the protests.
Under his mandate, Iran’s first direct attack against Israel took place, when on April 13 the Persian country launched hundreds of missiles and drones against its regional adversary, in a spectacular attack that, however, caused no damage. That attack was a response to the death of seven members of the Revolutionary Guard in the Iranian consulate in Damascus, and for which Tehran accused Tel Aviv.
Before becoming president on August 5, 2021, he went through almost all the ranks of the Iranian Judiciary: he was in the Judiciary (2019-2021), vice president of the Assembly of Experts, first vice president of the Judiciary (2004-2014). and Attorney General of Iran (2014-2016).
Raisí was born on December 14, 1960 in Noghan, in the holy city of Mashad, into a religious family descended from the Shiite Imam Hussein and, therefore, from the Prophet Muhammad, hence his black turban. Following in the footsteps of his father and his maternal grandfather, who were also clerics, he studied until the age of 15 in religious schools in Mashad, and then moved to the holy and ultra-conservative city of Qom to continue his training.
He was a student of the supreme leader in one of the Shiite seminaries in Qom and later expanded his studies with a postgraduate master’s degree in Private Law and a doctorate in Jurisprudence and Private Law. With this training, he entered the world of the judiciary in the 1980s in the city of Karaj and in 1985 he made the leap to the capital when he was appointed substitute prosecutor of Tehran.
One of the darkest points of his career dates from that time. He was part of the committee that supervised the executions of political prisoners in 1988, which ended the lives of thousands of opponents. His role in those executions earned him the nickname “hanging judge.”
He was always suspicious of the West, and especially of the United States, a country that included him on its sanctions list in November 2019.
