DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) – Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline protégé of the country's supreme leader, helped oversee mass executions of thousands of people in 1988 and later committed weapons-grade weapons. Led the country in near-level uranium enrichment and launches. He was killed in a massive drone and missile attack on Israel. He was 63 years old.
Raisi, Iran's foreign minister and other officials died suddenly. helicopter crash Sunday in northwest Iran comes as the country struggles with internal dissent and relations with the world. Raisi, a former cleric who once kissed the Quran in front of the United Nations, speaks more like a preacher than a politician when addressing the world.
Raisi lost the 2017 presidential election to relatively moderate incumbent Hassan Rouhani, four years later in a vote carefully managed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei to eliminate the main opposition candidate. came to power.
His arrival comes after President Rouhani's signature nuclear deal with world powers was left in tatters after then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the deal, leaving Iran in tatters. Years of new tension began between the United States and the United States.
However, while Raisi's new government has stated that it wants to rejoin the agreement, it has instead opposed international inspections, in part because of allegations of continued sabotage targeting Israel's nuclear program. I cited one reason. Talks in Vienna to restore the agreement remained stalled during the first months of the administration.
“Sanctions are America's new method of war against countries around the world,” Raisi told the United Nations in September 2021.
Furthermore, “the policy of 'maximum repression' continues. We want nothing more than what is rightfully ours.”
In 2022, large-scale protests spread across the country following the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman who was detained on suspicion of not wearing a hijab (scarf) in accordance with authorities' preferences. The months-long security crackdown that followed the demonstrations left more than 500 people dead and more than 22,000 detained.
In March, a United Nations commission of inquiry found Iran responsible for the “physical violence” that led to Amini's death.
Then came the 2023 Israel-Hamas war, in which Iranian-backed militias targeted Israel. Iran launched an unprecedented offensive against Israel in April, launching hundreds of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. Israel, the United States and its allies shot down the projectile, demonstrating how the years-long shadow war between Iran and Israel has boiled over.
In 2016, Khamenei appointed Raisi, a former Iranian attorney general, to run the Imam Reza Charitable Foundation, which controls Iranian conglomerates and donations. It is one of many bonyads, or charitable foundations, run by donations and assets seized after Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
These foundations do not provide public accounting of their spending and answer only to Iran's supreme leader. Imam Reza Charity, known in Persian as Astan-e-Quds-e-Razavi, is believed to be one of the largest charities. It owns almost half of the land in Mashhad, Iran's second largest city, which analysts estimate is worth tens of billions of dollars.
Upon appointing Raisi to the foundation, Ayatollah Khamenei called him a “trustworthy person with distinguished experience.” This has led analysts to speculate that Ayatollah Khamenei is grooming Raisi as the third candidate to become Iran's supreme leader. Raisi is a Shiite cleric who has final decision-making authority over all national affairs and serves as the country's supreme commander.
Although Raisi lost the 2017 election, he still received around 16 million votes. Khamenei appointed him to head Iran's judiciary, which has long been known and internationally criticized for its closed trials of human rights activists and Western officials. In 2019, the U.S. Treasury Department said it had “administratively supervised the execution of individuals in Iran who were juveniles at the time of their crimes, as well as torture, including mutilation, and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and punishment of prisoners of war.” Sanctions were imposed on Mr.
By 2021, Raisi had become an electoral favorite after a committee led by Ayatollah Khamenei disqualified the candidate who posed the biggest challenge to his inner circle. He won an overwhelming victory with nearly 62% of the 28.9 million votes cast, the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic's history. Millions of people stayed home and some invalidated their ballots.
At a post-election press conference, Raisi expressed defiance when asked about the 1988 executions, which involved sham retrials of political prisoners, extremists and others, in what became known as “executions.” I took it.
After Iran's then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini accepted a UN-brokered ceasefire, Saddam Hussein was ambushed by heavily armed Iranian rebel Mujahideen-e-Khalq members who crossed the Iranian border from Iraq. attacked. Iran has slowed its attacks.
The trials began around that time, and the defendants were asked to identify themselves. Those who answered “mujahideen” were executed, while others were questioned about their willingness to “clear minefields for the Islamic Republic's forces,” according to a 1990 Amnesty International report. International human rights groups estimate that as many as 5,000 people were executed. Raisi served as a member of the committee.
“I am proud to have defended human rights and the safety and well-being of people as a prosecutor wherever I was,” Raisi said.
Raisi was born in Mashhad on December 14, 1960, into a family descended from the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and is known for the black turban he would later wear. His father died when he was five years old. He attended a seminary in the Shiite holy city of Qom and later referred to himself as an ayatollah, a Shiite prelate.
He leaves behind a wife and two daughters.
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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
