Who is Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi?

President Raisi, widely seen as a successor to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is a hardline cleric who has overseen a crackdown on protesters and women.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has helped place his country into the regional driving seat. Picture: Office of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran via Getty Images

Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian president, is lost in the fog somewhere in the forests of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province.

In the not-too-distant past, Raisi, 63, presided over tribunals that sent thousands of political prisoners to their deaths, earning him sanctions for the US.

Since 2021, he has presided over Iran, helping to oversee a conservative crackdown on protesters and women who defied the regime’s Islamic restrictions.

A year after his election, the mid-ranking cleric ordered the country’s “hijab and chastity law” to be tightened, further restricting women’s dress and behaviour. Within weeks of the crackdown, Mahsa Amini died in police custody at the age of 22 after morality police detained her for wearing an “improper” hijab and violating the updated law.

Her death sparked months of nationwide protests, representing one of the biggest challenges to the Iranian establishment since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

A man after the Supreme Leader’s own heart, Raisi is widely seen as a possible successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, once the ageing jurist dies or resigns. He is said to have enjoyed Khamenei’s full backing for the president’s harsh security crackdown at home and his anti-Israeli and Western stance on the world stage.

Raisi is the primary executor of Khamenei’s directives and runs the country on a day-to-day basis. He is the face of the regime and is the one that signs its treaties abroad and appoints its ministers at home.

(Mr Raisi, centre, with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan before a trilateral meeting on Syria in Tehran in 2022. Picture:” Sputnik/AFP

After portraying himself as a champion for the poor, Raisi put in place austerity measures, triggering a rise in the price of food staples and widespread anger about his handling of the economy.As a young prosecutor, Raisi sat on a panel that oversaw the execution of hundreds of political prisoners in Tehran in 1988 during the Iraq-Iran war. Amnesty International estimated the death toll from execution was about 5,000.

In the region, Raisi helped to manoeuvre Iran into the driving seat. Its regional foes in the Arab world have sued for peace, while Iran’s proxies and allies hold sway in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Iran is again producing enriched uranium after then president Donald Trump tore up a treaty to restrict those activities in 2016, and it has been threatening to build a bomb if Israel attacks.

If this is the end for Raisi, his first vice-president, Mohammad Mokhber, who is sanctioned by the European Union, will take over, before calling new elections.

The prospect, however, will not bring Iranians any cheer, as many have come to accept that their elections are rigged.

Earlier this year, parliamentary elections saw the lowest turnout since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, after most reformist candidates were barred from running.

Raisi himself had defeated his reformist predecessor Hassan Rouhani in 2021 in a vote that barred serious rivals.

State media is asking Iranians to pray for him – many will, though not all will be wishing him well.

The Times