Iranian Hard-Liner Ebrahim Raisi Wins Presidency Amid Nuclear Talks

Mr. Raisi’s main challenger,

Abdolnaser Hemmati,

the only reasonable candidate remaining in the race, been given about eight% of the vote.

Iran’s current president,

Hassan Rouhani,

frequented Mr. Raisi on Saturday to congratulate him on the victory.

Mr. Raisi’s victory was largely the outcome of a historically low turnout of 48.eight%—a signal of the divisions inside of Iranian society and a reflection of common discontent with the absence of genuine selection in the vote.

Thousands and thousands of Iranians stayed dwelling, partly to protest moves by the clerical establishment to suggestion the election in Mr. Raisi’s favor ahead of any ballots ended up solid. In the weeks ahead of the vote, the country’s election supervisory physique experienced disqualified practically all nonconservative candidates.

Invalid ballots represented about 14% of the total tally, the second-most significant share of the vote.

The benefits also mirror apathy between Iranian voters toward the reformist and reasonable candidates. About 2.four million Iranians, or about four% of qualified voters, solid ballots for Mr. Hemmati.

By comparison, the politically reasonable Mr. Rouhani won 18 million votes in 2013 and 23.five million in 2017. In the 2009 election, far more liberal reformist candidates been given thirteen.five million votes.

“Many Iranians have dropped any hope in reform,” mentioned Roham Alvandi, affiliate professor of intercontinental background at the London College of Economics. “Reformists who known as on people to vote ended up largely disregarded.”

With Mr. Raisi’s earn, Iran’s main institutions are now managed by the country’s conservatives, from the presidency and the military services to the parliament and judiciary. These kinds of benefits show Iran shifting toward a 1-get together condition, analysts mentioned.

“This election would make explicit what most Iranians have presently recognised implicitly: that the Islamic Republic will not countenance any peaceful reform,” Mr. Alvandi mentioned. “That erodes what tiny common legitimacy the current political procedure has remaining.”

Mr. Raisi is owing to be sworn in as president in early August.

Challenging difficulties await. Iran is experiencing escalating threats and regular confrontations with Center East rivals. Tehran is also engaged in rough negotiations with the U.S. more than how to revive an intercontinental nuclear deal, which Iranians hope would lift some American sanctions that have crushed the Iranian economy.

Iran’s financial troubles have specified increase to regular bouts of unrest. As head of the country’s judiciary, Mr. Raisi has tolerated tiny dissent, presiding more than mass arrests of journalists, legal professionals and American citizens, alongside with loss of life sentences to a number of minors.

The sixty-12 months-aged Mr. Raisi, who is also a cleric, has been element of Iran’s judicial procedure due to the fact the starting of the Islamic Republic. He is recognised overseas for serving on a committee that in 1988 condemned 1000’s of political prisoners to loss of life.

Mr. Raisi studied in the early nineties under Iran’s Supreme Leader

Ali Khamenei

and has under no circumstances appeared to stray considerably from his positions. In return, Mr. Khamenei has rewarded his protégé with a sequence of promotions.

Just after heading Iran’s Basic Inspection Office environment, an anticorruption physique, for a 10 years, Mr. Raisi in 2004 became deputy of the country’s judiciary. Mr. Khamenei appointed him prosecutor-general in 2014, and picked him to head the Astan Quds Razavi, a charity worthy of billions of bucks central to the supreme leader’s enterprise pursuits.

Just after Mr. Raisi dropped the 2017 presidential election to the incumbent president, Mr. Rouhani, the supreme chief appointed him head of the judiciary in 2019.

Mr. Raisi’s most recent progress as president has led analysts to believe Mr. Khamenei is grooming him as his possible successor as supreme chief. “It is not as if he is a heavyweight in any way,”

Mehrzad Boroujerdi,

director of the College of Public and Intercontinental Affairs at Virginia Tech, mentioned of Mr. Raisi. “Khamenei experienced no justification for supplying him all these positions, if not to groom him for a high-rating position, which I imagine could be to be successful him.”

Mr. Khamenei, eighty two, was also president ahead of he was picked as supreme chief in 1989. His appointment arrived immediately after the loss of life of Ayatollah

Ruhollah Khomeini.

Even as a cleric in demand of Iran’s judiciary, Mr. Raisi has sought to solid himself as a man of the people. When he ran for president in 2017, he posed for photographs with a common, seriously tattooed rapper, Amir Tataloo, in an try to charm to younger voters.

All through the closing times of his election campaign this 12 months, Mr. Raisi went to a assembly of athletes in Tehran and sat between the group to view components of the soccer Earth Cup 2022 qualifier between Iran and Iraq. He took notes when the athletes complained to him about their financial woes, these as very poor salaries and benefits.

Previously in the 7 days, people flocked to his campaign places of work with letters asking him for assist with their financial challenges, equally to what supporters of previous populist President

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

did.

How Mr. Raisi will approach Western nations, notably the U.S., depends largely on whom he appoints to his cupboard. He has in the earlier criticized departing President Hassan Rouhani for pursuing diplomacy, which led to the 2015 intercontinental nuclear deal. Even though Mr. Raisi has mentioned he supports the nuclear deal, due to the fact Mr. Khamenei has endorsed it, he has also mentioned he doesn’t rely on the U.S.

More immediately, Mr. Raisi have to address a flagging economy though retaining a check on the Covid-19 pandemic.

Growth in Iran has stuttered in current decades, constrained by U.S. sanctions, though unemployment is high and the regional currency has plummeted in benefit. The financial disaster has pushed far more families into poverty. It has pushed Iranians to protest in the streets, exactly where they have been met with brutal drive by safety forces.

Compose to Sune Engel Rasmussen at [email protected]