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JULY 1, 2021 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
The Mass Murderer Who Will be Iran’s Next President BY SHAMMAI SISKIND
ON THE MORNING
of S at u r d ay, June 19, Iranians awoke to learn the identity of who their next president would be. The initial polls had proved correct. With over seventy-two percent of the total vote, Ebrahim Raisi, the current Chief Justice of Iran and head of the country’s court system, was named president-elect. As per Iranian law, he will assume office in early August.
Who is Ebrahim Raisi?
Raisi is a unique figure in Iranian politics. Making the bulk of his career in the country’s judiciary, he has for decades been known as a staunch supporter of the regime as well as a hardliner on nearly every policy area from foreign relations to domestic issues. But Raisi is not just another run-of-themill Revolutionary loyalist – something that is more or less a prerequisite for advancement in Iran’s government. Raisi is perhaps the government official with the most bureaucratic and political experience in the country. To put it succinctly, Raisi is the biggest regime insider in Iran today. Raisi’s introduction into government began when he was a mere nineteen years old. The young Raisi, scion of a prestigious clerical family, was groomed for religious leadership from his early years. He attended seminary in Qom, a prominent center of Shiite learning. He later attended Shahid Motahari University in Tehran, where he received a doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence and law. In 1979, Raisi participated in the Revolution, which toppled the Western-backed Shah.
Allegedly, it was shortly after the Revolution that Raisi was “scouted” by a close aide of the Revolution’s ideological leader and newly seated Supreme Leader of Iran Rohullah Khamenei. While the Revolution had succeeded in deposing the Shah, the fledgling Islamic Republic faced a number of immediate challenges. These included the Western-educated loyalists of the Shah who were, to put it lightly, not exactly thrilled about living under a radical Shiite theocracy. Other factional groups, long a feature of Iran’s traditionally rich political spectrum, included secularist left-wing dissidents and ethnic separatist movements, all of whom posed serious threats to the Revolution’s political hegemony. At the same time, an all-out war with neighboring Iraq began almost immediately. The conflict, which would turn into an almost unimaginable bloody eight-year war of attrition, quickly became a huge strain on Iran’s resources and threatened the Ayatollah’s hold on power. It was against this backdrop that Raisi was recruited to the nascent regime. The aging leaders of the new regime were looking for young and headstrong individuals, with dedication to the cause who would keep the new power machine running and solidify the Revolution’s control. By the age of 21, Raisi was already awarded his first judicial appointment as the prosecutor of Karaj, a suburb of Tehran. Despite his youth, Raisi quickly ascended the ranks. He was soon appointed as Prosecutor of Hamadan City while simultaneously serving his role in Karaj. Shortly after, Raisi became the chief prosecutor for all of Hamadan province. As Raisi quickly became one of the most experienced jurists in the country, he was eventually tapped for promotion to the central judiciary establishment. In 1985, when he was barely 25 years old, Raisi became the assistant prosecutor in the country’s capital of Tehran. During this period, Raisi oversaw hundreds of cases, a large portion of which involved capital cases against political dissidents. These years of meting out harsh sentences to untold numbers of Iranians were merely preparation for Raisi’s most infamous participation in Iranian government brutality, an event that became known as the 1988 Prisoner’s Massacre. At the height of the Iran-Iraq War, the authorities used the conflict to create a climate in which dissent was not tolerated. Any criticism of state policy, even in fields not directly related to the war, was portrayed as betrayal of the state. With this pretext in place, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a series of secret orders for the execution of political prisoners. A special sixteen-member committee was established to oversee the process, which
