Islamic hardliner Ayatollah-backed Ebrahim Raisi Wins Iran Presidential Election 2021

Islamic hardliner Ayatollah-backed Ebrahim Raisi wins Iran Presidential Election 2021 and is now elected as country's eighth president. His victory was relatively anticipated because he lost to Rouhani in the 2017 presidential elections in Iran but was able to acquire more than 900 thousand votes alone in Tehran and over 15 million votes in total. Many Iranians viewed the recent election as rigged in favor of Mr Raisi, and many boycotted it. Official data reveal that voter turnout in the presidential election was the lowest ever, at 48.8%, compared to more than 70% in the last election in 2017.

The candidacy and the idea of the election was more to him than a coronation, and the eligible voters in the Islamic Republic have been generalizing indifference since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, which has been a sign of support for theocracy. Some have advocated for a boycott, including former hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ebrahim Raisi rose to notoriety in 1980, when he was 20 years old, when he was appointed Prosecutor General of Karaj. From 2004 to 2014, before becoming the General Prosecutor of Iran between 2014 and 2016, he worked as the Procurator in Tehran and the First Deputy in the Head of the Judiciary. Raisi was appointed head of the Iranian judiciary in 2019 and aroused worries because of his participation during the 1988 Iran-Iraq war in mass killings of thousands of political people. 

Raisi has denied any involvement in the death sentences. He has also claimed that they were authorized by a fatwa, or religious decision, issued by Ayatollah Khomeini, the previous supreme leader. Raisi oversaw impunity for politicians and security personnel suspected of murdering demonstrators amid disturbances in 2019, according to Amnesty International.

The prospective supreme leader visited Syria and Lebanon (at the end of January 2018) and met with a number of senior Hezbollah commanders and religious officials (both Sunni and Shia) along the Israeli-Lebanese border. This way was seen by the public as the Oath of Allegiance as the principle in Shia Islam politics, or [بیعت] in Farsi. He was dispatched there (perhaps at the direction of the supreme leader) to reassure Iranian friends that he would be the true commander in chief in the future. 

Iranian state TV attempted to downplays attendance by referring to hereditary leaders and the lesser participation in Western democracies and the Arab Gulf Sheikhdoms around it. After a day of enhanced voting efforts by authorities the state television broadcasts pictures of jam-packed polling stands overnight in many regions, which aim to show the polls at a last-minute rush.

However, the Iranian theokocracy has quoted voting participation as a proof of legitimacy since the 1979 Revolution ousted the shah, with the first referendum which garnered 98.2 per cent support merely asking if people wanted or not an Islamic Republic.

With Raisi's election as president, hardliners will control all three branches of government: the executive, legislative, and judicial. Iran's society will become more closed. Freedoms will very certainly be restricted even farther than previously.

The government will seek to China for assistance in pulling the economy out of its quagmire. With the West, there will be more friction. Indirect negotiations between Iran and the United States in Vienna to resurrect the nuclear deal may be fraught with additional uncertainty. According to sources, the negotiations will now be suspended for a few weeks to allow all parties to assess the new reality in Iran.

June 21, 2021