Iran’s hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi has long been seen as a protégé of Iran’s supreme leader and a potential successor in the country’s Shiite theocracy. The news of his helicopter crash on Sunday has drawn renewed attention to him, particularly given his controversial past and current political stance.
Raisi, 63, who previously led Iran’s judiciary, faces sanctions from the U.S. and other countries for his involvement in the mass execution of prisoners in 1988. He ran unsuccessfully for president in 2017 against Hassan Rouhani, the relatively moderate cleric who brokered Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
In 2021, Raisi ran again in an election that saw all his major opponents barred from running under Iran’s vetting system. He won nearly 62% of the 28.9 million votes, marking the lowest voter turnout by percentage in the Islamic Republic’s history. Millions of Iranians stayed home, and others voided their ballots.
When questioned about the 1988 executions after his election, Raisi remained defiant. These executions, often referred to as “death commissions,” involved sham retrials of political prisoners, militants, and others at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. Following a UN-brokered cease-fire, members of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, heavily armed by Saddam Hussein, launched a surprise attack on Iran from Iraq, which Iran successfully repelled.
During this period, defendants in the trials were asked to identify themselves. Those who identified as “Mujahedeen” were executed, while others were interrogated about their willingness to “clear minefields for the army of the Islamic Republic,” according to a 1990 Amnesty International report. International rights groups estimate that up to 5,000 people were executed. Raisi was part of the commissions overseeing these trials.
In 2019, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Raisi for his administrative role
in the executions of individuals who were juveniles at the time of their crimes and for the torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of prisoners in Iran, including amputations. The sanctions also cited his involvement in the 1988 executions.
Although Iran is ultimately governed by its 85-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Raisi, as president, has supported the country’s enrichment of uranium to near-weapons-grade levels and has obstructed international inspections as part of its confrontation with the West.
Raisi also endorsed a massive assault on Israel in April, where over 300 drones and missiles were fired at the country in retaliation for a suspected Israeli attack that killed Iranian generals at the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, Syria. This assault was part of a long-standing shadow war between the two nations.
Furthermore, Raisi backed the country’s security services during their crackdown on dissent, particularly after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 and the subsequent nationwide protests. The months-long security crackdown resulted in the deaths of more than 500 people and the detention of over 22,000. In March, a United Nations investigative panel found that Iran was responsible for the “physical violence” that led to Amini’s death after her arrest for not wearing a hijab to the authorities’ satisfaction.
