DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line protege of the rustic’s ideally suited chief who helped oversee the mass executions of 1000’s in 1988 and later led the rustic because it enriched uranium close to weapons-grade ranges, introduced a significant assault on Israel and skilled mass protests, has died. He used to be 63.
Raisi’s loss of life, at the side of the overseas minister and different officers in a helicopter crash Sunday in northwestern Iran, got here as Iran struggles with inside dissent and its family members with the broader international. A cleric first, Raisi as soon as kissed the Quran, the Islamic holy ebook, sooner than the United International locations and spoke extra like a preacher than a statesman when addressing the arena.
Raisi, who misplaced a presidential election to the slightly average incumbent Hassan Rouhani in 2017, got here to energy 4 years later in a vote moderately controlled through Very best Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to transparent any primary opposition candidate.
His election got here at a time when family members between Tehran and Washington have been in particular nerve-racking following U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2018 resolution to unilaterally withdraw The usa from a nuclear deal geared toward restricting Iran’s uranium enrichment in alternate for sanctions reduction.
On this picture launched through the Iranian Presidency Administrative center, President Ebrahim Raisi attends a gathering together with his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev throughout the inauguration rite of dam of Qiz Qalasi, or Castel of Woman in Azeri, on the border of Iran and Azerbaijan, Sunday, Might 19, 2024. (Iranian Presidency Administrative center by way of AP)
Whilst Raisi mentioned he sought after to rejoin the care for international powers, his new management as an alternative driven again in opposition to world inspections of nuclear amenities, partially over an alleged sabotage marketing campaign that Tehran blamed on Israel. Talks to revive the accord remained stalled in his executive’s first months.
“Sanctions are the U.S.’ new method of battle with the international locations of the arena,” Raisi instructed the United International locations in September 2021. “The coverage of ‘most oppression’ remains to be on. We wish not anything greater than what’s rightfully ours.”
Mass protests swept the rustic in 2022 after the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman who had been detained over her allegedly loose headscarf, or hijab. The monthslong security crackdown that followed the demonstrations killed more than 500 people and more than 22,000 others were detained.
In March, a United Nations investigative panel found that Iran was responsible for the “physical violence” that led to Amini’s death.
Then came the current Israel-Hamas war, in which Iran-backed militants targeted Israel. Tehran launched an extraordinary attack itself on Israel in April that used hundreds of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. Israel, the U.S. and its allies shot down the incoming fire, but it showed just how intense the yearslong shadow war between Iran and Israel was.
Born in Mashhad on Dec. 14, 1960, Raisi came from a family that traces its lineage to Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, as signaled by the black turban he would later wear. His father died when he was 5. He went on to the seminary in the Shiite holy city of Qom and later described himself as an ayatollah, a high-ranking Shiite cleric.
On Monday, state-run media referred to Raisi as being “martyred while serving the nation.” Khamenei said Raisi “did not believe in tiredness.” Others cited the detente reached last year with Saudi Arabia as a major milestone.
But activists abroad, like the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, described his presidency as seeing “a stunning escalation of state repression and violence against peaceful dissent in Iran.”
“Raisi presided over a country suffocated by a regime that fears its own people,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the center’s executive director. “He was merely one boot on the necks of the Iranian people; others can easily take his place.”
In 1988, at the end of Iran’s long war with Iraq, Raisi served on what would become known as “death commissions,” which handed down death sentences for political prisoners, militants and others. International rights groups estimate that as many as 5,000 people were executed.
After Iran’s then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini accepted a U.N.-brokered cease-fire, members of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, heavily armed by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, stormed across the Iranian border in a surprise attack. Iran ultimately blunted their assault, but the attack set the stage for the sham retrials.
Some who gave the impression have been requested to spot themselves. Those that replied “mujahedeen” have been sent to their deaths.
Raisi used to be defiant when requested at a information convention after his election concerning the executions.
“I’m pleased with being a defender of human rights and of other people’s safety and luxury as a prosecutor anywhere I used to be,” mentioned Raisi, who additionally served as Iran’s lawyer common for a time.
In 2016, Khamenei appointed Raisi to run the Imam Reza charity basis, which manages a conglomerate of companies and endowments in Iran. It’s one of the bonyads, or charitable foundations, fueled through donations or property seized after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Those foundations be offering no public accounting in their spending and solution most effective to Iran’s ideally suited chief. The Imam Reza charity, referred to as “Astan-e Quds-e Razavi” in Farsi, is assumed to be one of the crucial largest. Analysts estimate its price at tens of billions of greenbacks because it owns virtually part the land in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest town.
At Raisi’s appointment to the basis, Khamenei known as him a “faithful individual with high-profile enjoy.” That resulted in analyst hypothesis that Khamenei might be grooming Raisi as a conceivable candidate to be Iran’s third-ever ideally suited chief, a Shiite cleric who has ultimate say on all state issues and serves as the rustic’s commander-in-chief.
Regardless that Raisi misplaced his 2017 marketing campaign, he nonetheless garnered just about 16 million votes. Khamenei put in him as the top of Iran’s the world over criticized judiciary, lengthy recognized for its closed-door trials of human rights activists and the ones with Western ties. The U.S. Treasury in 2019 sanctioned Raisi “for his administrative oversight over the executions of people who have been juveniles on the time in their crime and the torture and different merciless, inhuman, or degrading remedy or punishment of prisoners in Iran, together with amputations.”
Via 2021, Raisi was the dominant determine within the election after a panel below Khamenei disqualified applicants who posed the best problem to his protege. He swept just about 62% of the 28.9 million votes in that election. Tens of millions stayed house and others voided ballots, ensuing within the lowest turnout through share within the Islamic Republic’s historical past.
Raisi is survived through his spouse and two daughters.
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