Ebrahim Raisi was not only the president  

The death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash on Sunday has shocked the Middle East in particular and the broader world in general.

The death of Raisi was confirmed 17 hours after the helicopter carrying him and his high-ranking delegation disappeared. It was officially confirmed that all the passengers, Raisi and his foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdullahian, have died. However, Raisi’s death does not leave a power vacuum in Iran and according to the constitution, the first vice President Mohammad Mokhber to assume power next and he is responsible to hold elections within 50 days.

Raisi has been considered as one of the closest figures to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This relationship was so close that some observers believed that Raisi could be the successor of Khamenei after his death.

Who was Raisi and how did he become the president of Iran?

Ebrahim Raisi was born in 1964 in the Noghan district of Mashhad. Based on the information of Raisi’s official website, his father, Hujjatul Islam Haji Raees Al Sadati, was also a cleric in Mashhad. Raisi studied in the religious schools of Mashhad and then went to the city of Qom, the center of religious schools of Iran, where he studied in the field of religious sciences.

While studying in the religious schools of Qom, he established a relationship with the opposition clerics of Mohammad Reza Shah and joined the group of young supporters of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. After the victory of the revolution, Raisi climbed the ladder of power with impressive speed.

He was only 20 years old when he became the prosecutor of the cities of Karaj and Hamadan, and from 1361 to 1363 he was the prosecutor of Hamadan province. An important official who had a lot of authority in Iran’s “revolutionary” system.

In the same period and at the age of 23, he married the daughter of one of the most influential clerics in Iran. Raisi’s marriage with the daughter of Ayatollah Seyyed Ahmad Alam Al-Hadi, the Friday imam of Mashhad, further strengthened Raisi’s position.

Raisi was appointed deputy prosecutor of the Tehran Revolution in 1998 and held the position of Tehran prosecutor.

Raisi, after five years as head of the Tehran Prosecutor’s Office, became the head of the “General Inspection Organization”. After that, he was the first deputy of the Judiciary for ten years, and in 2013 he became the Attorney General of Iran and then he was in charge of “Astan Quds Razavi”, which is one of the closest institutions to the leader of Iran.

Failure in the elections and victory in the judiciary

In 2017, Raisi entered the presidential election race against Hassan Rouhani. In this election, Rouhani defeated Raisi by winning 57pc of the votes. Although Raisi entered the field with Khamenei’s support, he managed to get only 38pc of the votes and lost to the reformist rival.

A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and other senior officials crashed in the northwestern part of Iran on May 19, 2024. APA

The defeat of the candidate supported by the leader of the Islamic Republic had hurt the position of the concervatives in the balance of power against the reformists. But Khamenei made up for this failure by appointing a head of the judiciary. At the same time, Raisi also won the vice presidency of the Council of Leadership Experts. In case of the death of Iran’s religious leader, this council is responsible for appointing a new leader.

This promotion made Raisi one step closer to the presidency of Iran and further established his position among the fundamentalists.

In the presidential election, finally, Raisi won the election without a serious opponent and won 62pc of the votes. This election had the lowest level of participation in the history of Iran.

Raisi and the presidency

Raisi started his government with the slogan of “improving the economy and solving the country’s problems” and supporting diplomatic programs to remove international sanctions.

On the other hand, Raisi’s government faced serious challenges due to the bankrupt economy and increasing foreign sanctions.

But in the field of foreign policy, the President’s government was able to establish better relations with Saudi Arabia, the main rival of Iran in the Islamic world.

The embassies of the two countries were reopened in Tehran and Riyadh after seven years, and diplomatic relations between these two long-time rivals were terminated.

Meanwhile, the Gaza war and Israel’s attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus brought the proxy war between Iran and Israel to a critical and unprecedented stage. For the first time, Iran went to the brink of direct war with Israel and in response to Israel’s attack on its consulate, it launched 300 missiles and drones towards Israel.