As Iran’s general elections take place today; many labeled it a formality saying the presidential candidate who was to take the victory was already determined and backed by their Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who despite his publicly scandalous past would have himself crowned.
The presidential candidates at the final debate. From left to right, Alireza Zakani, Mohsen Mehralizadeh, Saeed Jalili, Abdolnasser Hemmati and Ebrahim Raisi.
Source: AP NEWS
Ebrahim Raisi, the rumored front runner, spent 2 years as the Chief Justice of Iran during which he was called out for his outright cruelty on multiple occasions by the western media. One of these instances was back in 1988 when he was involved in the manhandling and later execution of protesters turned prisoners, about a number placed at 5000 by Amnesty International. Even though Raisi himself never publicly discussed the allegations, Senior clerics involved have iterated that the trials were fair and the decision even though never acknowledged as mass prosecution was rewardable.
Due to the many similar incidents, including the suppression by force of the 2009 unrest regarding the Green Movement protests surrounding Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election at the time, was then sanctioned by the US, sanctions that still haven’t lifted and could lead to 4 further years of very strained bilateral relationships and large fatal waves for the country’s already sinking economy. Another incident that potentially makes surrounding Middle Eastern countries nervous is the threat made by Raisi to then President Trump in January early this year on the first anniversary of U.S. drone strike in Baghdad saying, “The enemy should not think that if someone (who) appeared in the guise of the American president (and) is responsible for the assassination, they will be safe from justice. None will be safe anywhere in the world. The resistance is determined to take revenge.”
However, recently Raisi has been seen going easy during his Presidential debates. He was seen somewhat declaring that his government would try to reinforce the nuclear trade agreement entered by Iran during the relatively “reasonable” regime of President Hassan Rouhani that Trump withdrew from declaring “that a murderous regime desired only a peaceful nuclear energy program.” Following this withdrawal Iran’s economy took a grave turn for the worse and a re-entry could help with matters but so far Biden’s office has been engaged in a futile series of talks back in May pressuring for a stricter agreement to be signed that would limit Iran’s ability to produce weapons for the next 10 years. Regarding the sanctioned former Judge rising to power, a statement hasn’t been made yet putting the international community on edge as to what it would mean for the two long-time adversaries.
The fate of the aforementioned rivalry would also decide Iran’s interactions with USA’s allies in the Middle East given that it the country already came hard at Israel for its recent war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank calling for support and joint efforts by the Muslim countries. Iran has also been involved in a shadow war with Israel since 2019 with back and forth attacks on ships and navels. Israel International News recently said that it was happy about Raisi as President since he would provide “the ugly façade, making all intelligent people pay attention to Iran’s bullying, conspiring and directing global terror activities” in a direct attack.
An image released by Nournews in early April showing the flooded engine room of the Iranian ship after an alleged attack by Israel in the Red Sea off Yemen.
Source: AP NEWS
Thus correspondence between Israel and Iran is not predicted to smooth over soon but instead has also worsened the country’s relations with UAE over the Abraham Accords signed in September last year that opened tourism for Israelites. The Accords were discussed among many journalists as a united front for the isolation of Iran and Palestine, categorized as treacherous by the former President Rouhani. With Raisi’s new regime not much is expected to change on that front either, instead an escalation might even be in the books.
Initially the EU gave signs that it was particularly positive about a potential new administration. “The outcome of the elections is important to European countries,” Eldar Mamedov, a foreign policy adviser to the European Parliament’s Socialists and Democrats group, told Al Jazeera, with even UK, France and the EU pushing the US toward leniency on the sanctions ending in little to no success but as the reports of a conservative cleric with a human rights abuse past ushered in, agitation among the European nations grew, especially regarding the prisoners held in Iran that have reportedly often been used as bargaining chips.
Although establishing a place in the unwelcoming international community and the consequences of failure to do so will be perturbing for Ebrahim Raisi and his government, they are just one of the stressful factors. Another important one would be having to deal with the decreasing popularity which has already started to affect election turnout as many are boycotting and protesting, due to the seedy dropouts by other candidates and the apparent moral ambiguity of the voting system. As the Supreme Leader took to Twitter to blame the public frustration against the system on the media, it is still calculated that this will be the lowest turnout since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
A series of tweets by Ayatollah Khomeini on Wednesday night.
Source: Twitter
There have also been rumors going around about Khomeini potentially training Raisi as his successor and his presidency being just a stepping stone into what could be a much grander plan. However, despite a pessimistic cloud hanging over the allegedly rigged elections, time will only tell what the future holds for the upcoming unpopular conservative administration.
