Who is Ebrahim Raisi? The President of the hard line against dissent and the West

The profile of the President

ROME – Here’s what to know about Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, as the search for his crashed helicopter continues.

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THE CAREER AS A MAGISTRATE AND THE 2021 ELECTIONS

Born in 1960 in Mashad, a city in the north-east of the country, Ebrahim Raisi, 64 years old, became president of Iran on 19 June 2021 . He began his career as a prosecutor in the early 1980sand rose from Attorney General of Tehran in 1994to Minister of Justice in 2019.

According tothe Center for Human Rights in Iran,his two years as head of Iranian justice were marked by the intensification of repression of dissent and violations of human rights.

In 2021, many reformist Iranians refused to take part in an election that was considered a given. The overall voter turnout was in fact only 48.8%, the lowest since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979.

THE USA SANCTIONS AND THE “DEATH COMMISSION < /h3>

He is the first elected Iranian leader to be subject to US sanctions. The US Treasury Department sanctioned Raisi in November 2019, citing his participation in the 1988 “death commission” as a prosecutor, and a United Nations report which indicated that the Iranian judiciary was responsible for the execution of at least nine children between 2018 and 2019.

THE HARD LINE

His inauguration was seen as signaling the beginning of a new, harsher era that could herald important changes in the Islamic Republic’s policies, at home and abroad.

Raisi has long opposed dialogue with the West and is a close ally of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei.