Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, supreme leader’s protege, dies at 63 in helicopter crash
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line protege of the nation’s supreme chief who helped oversee the mass executions of 1000’s in 1988 and later led the nation because it enriched uranium close to weapons-grade ranges, launched a serious assault on Israel and skilled mass protests, has died. He was 63.
Raisi’s dying, together with the international minister and different officers in a helicopter crash Sunday in northwestern Iran, got here as Iran struggles with inner dissent and its relations with the broader world. A cleric first, Raisi as soon as kissed the Quran, the Islamic holy ebook, earlier than the United Nations and spoke extra like a preacher than a statesman when addressing the world.
Raisi, who misplaced a presidential election to the comparatively average incumbent Hassan Rouhani in 2017, got here to energy 4 years later in a vote fastidiously managed by Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to clear any main opposition candidate.
His election got here at a time when relations between Tehran and Washington had been notably tense following U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2018 choice to unilaterally withdraw America from a nuclear deal aimed toward limiting Iran’s uranium enrichment in change for sanctions reduction.
Whereas Raisi mentioned he needed to rejoin the take care of world powers, his new administration as an alternative pushed again towards worldwide inspections of nuclear amenities, partly over an alleged sabotage marketing campaign that Tehran blamed on Israel. Talks to revive the accord remained stalled in his authorities’s first months.
“Sanctions are the U.S.’ new means of battle with the nations of the world,” Raisi advised the United Nations in September 2021. “The coverage of ‘most oppression’ remains to be on. We wish nothing greater than what’s rightfully ours.”
Mass protests swept the nation in 2022 after the dying of Mahsa Amini, a girl who had been detained over her allegedly unfastened headband, or hijab. The monthslong safety crackdown that adopted the demonstrations killed greater than 500 folks and greater than 22,000 others had been detained.
In March, a United Nations investigative panel discovered that Iran was accountable for the “bodily violence” that led to Amini’s dying.
Then got here the present Israel-Hamas battle, by which Iran-backed militants focused Israel. Tehran launched a unprecedented assault itself on Israel in April that used a whole bunch of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. Israel, the U.S. and its allies shot down the incoming fireplace, however it confirmed simply how intense the yearslong shadow battle between Iran and Israel was.
Born in Mashhad on Dec. 14, 1960, Raisi got here from a household that traces its lineage to Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, as signaled by the black turban he would later put on. His father died when he was 5. He went on to the seminary within the Shiite holy metropolis 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 whereas serving the nation.” Khamenei mentioned Raisi “didn’t imagine in tiredness.” Others cited the detente reached final 12 months with Saudi Arabia as a serious milestone.
However activists overseas, just like the New York-based Middle for Human Rights in Iran, described his presidency as seeing “a shocking escalation of state repression and violence towards peaceable dissent in Iran.”
“Raisi presided over a rustic suffocated by a regime that fears its personal folks,” mentioned Hadi Ghaemi, the middle’s government director. “He was merely one boot on the necks of the Iranian folks; others can simply take his place.”
In 1988, on the finish of Iran’s lengthy battle with Iraq, Raisi served on what would grow to be often known as “dying commissions,” which handed down dying sentences for political prisoners, militants and others. Worldwide rights teams estimate that as many as 5,000 folks had been executed.
After Iran’s then-Supreme Chief Ruhollah Khomeini accepted a U.N.-brokered cease-fire, members of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, closely armed by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, stormed throughout the Iranian border in a shock assault. Iran in the end blunted their assault, however the assault set the stage for the sham retrials.
Some who appeared had been requested to establish themselves. Those that responded “mujahedeen” had been despatched to their deaths.
Raisi was defiant when requested at a information convention after his election in regards to the executions.
“I’m happy with being a defender of human rights and of individuals’s safety and luxury as a prosecutor wherever I used to be,” mentioned Raisi, who additionally served as Iran’s legal professional 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 in every of many bonyads, or charitable foundations, fueled by donations or belongings seized after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
These foundations provide no public accounting of their spending and reply solely to Iran’s supreme chief. The Imam Reza charity, often known as “Astan-e Quds-e Razavi” in Farsi, is believed to be one of many greatest. Analysts estimate its value at tens of billions of {dollars} because it owns nearly half the land in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest metropolis.
At Raisi’s appointment to the inspiration, Khamenei known as him a “reliable particular person with high-profile expertise.” That led to analyst hypothesis that Khamenei may very well be grooming Raisi as a attainable candidate to be Iran’s third-ever supreme chief, a Shiite cleric who has ultimate say on all state issues and serves because the nation’s commander-in-chief.
Although Raisi misplaced his 2017 marketing campaign, he nonetheless garnered practically 16 million votes. Khamenei put in him as the pinnacle of Iran’s internationally criticized judiciary, lengthy recognized for its closed-door trials of human rights activists and people with Western ties. The U.S. Treasury in 2019 sanctioned Raisi “for his administrative oversight over the executions of people who had been juveniles on the time of their crime and the torture and different merciless, inhuman, or degrading remedy or punishment of prisoners in Iran, together with amputations.”
By 2021, Raisi turned the dominant determine within the election after a panel below Khamenei disqualified candidates who posed the best problem to his protege. He swept practically 62% of the 28.9 million votes in that election. Thousands and thousands stayed residence and others voided ballots, ensuing within the lowest turnout by proportion within the Islamic Republic’s historical past.
Raisi is survived by his spouse and two daughters.
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