An ultra-conservative at Iran’s helm

Raisi is seen as the Ayatollah-in-waiting

Ebrahim Raisi’s victory in Iran’s presidential elections was a foregone conclusion. The entire election process was engineered to propel him to the presidency. A Shia Muslim cleric who heads Iran’s judiciary, Raisi is known for his ultra-conservative views. He is said to be close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Raisi won a landslide victory, securing 62% of the votes cast in Friday’s presidential election. However, this cannot be interpreted as indicative of his popularity or of the support conservatives enjoy among Iranians. The conservative Guardian Council, which vets all potential candidates, disqualified most reformists aspiring to contest the presidential election, leaving Raisi as the only prominent candidate in the list. With just two lacklustre reformists in the fray, moderate voters were left without much of a choice. They preferred to not vote. Voter turnout in Friday’s election was just 48.8%, a historic low.

Thanks to the support he received from Iran’s centres of power, Raisi has risen to the presidency. With this, all of Iran’s institutions are once again in the hands of ultra-conservatives. Raisi allegedly had a hand in the extrajudicial mass execution of political prisoners in 1988. In 2018, he reportedly called the massacre “one of the proud achievements of the system.” Iranians can expect his presidency to be more puritanical than the one under his predecessor, Hassan Rouhani, a reformist. Raisi will impose more restrictions on social activity, personal freedoms and women’s rights. He is slated to succeed Khamenei. An ambitious man, he will avoid pursuing policies that could ruffle the feathers of the conservative establishment, whose support he needs to propel him to the Supreme Leader’s chair.

Raisi’s victory puts the United States in a spot. Former President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on him in 2019 via an executive order. Already, the US has no formal ties with Iran; ongoing talks between the two sides on revival of the 2015 nuclear deal are being conducted in Vienna with the help of intermediaries. It will be embarrassing for the Joe Biden administration to have to strike a deal with a country that is helmed by a sanctioned individual. Yet, while Raisi may be a rigid ultra-conservative on domestic policy, the state of Iran’s economy, which is in crisis, may force him to be pragmatic in foreign policy. While he will look to China and Russia for economic support, he will need to get the US to lift the economic sanctions. That will require him to reach an agreement with the US on the nuclear deal. The possibility of Raisi making compromises must not be ruled out.