Eighth president of the Islamic Republic of Iran (3 August 2021 to 19 May 2024); cleric, former head of the judiciary; died in helicopter crash with foreign minister Amir-Abdollahian in East Azerbaijan.
Career path: deputy prosecutor of Tehran during the 1988 mass executions; prosecutor general of Iran 2014-2016; custodian of Astan-e Qods-e Razavi 2016-2019; head of the judiciary 2019-2021; president 2021-2024. Each appointment came from Khamenei directly or from bodies Khamenei controls.
Raisi is the clearest single illustration of what hand-picked promotion inside the Islamic Republic looks like over four decades. The 1988 commission record was public. Every promoting authority knew. The promotions continued. The presidency was the last rung.
Iranian news coverage in Persian continues to reference Raisi constantly: his policies, his cabinet, the legacy of his presidency, the circumstances of his death. Learners need the name, the dates, and the 1988 fact, because the 1988 fact is the load-bearing context for every other entry in his record.
ابراهیم رئیسی (ebrahim ra’isi), president of the Islamic Republic of Iran from August 2021 until 19 May 2024, died alongside foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian when their helicopter crashed in East Azerbaijan province. Before the presidency he was Khamenei’s hand-picked head of the judiciary from 2019 to 2021. Earlier still, as deputy prosecutor of Tehran in summer 1988, he served on the four-member “Death Commission” that sentenced thousands of political prisoners to execution in a matter of weeks. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented the commission’s role; their estimates of the killings range from 4,500 to 5,000 in three months, with some Iranian opposition tallies higher. He was elected president in 2021 in a vote with the lowest turnout in the Republic’s history, after the Guardian Council disqualified every credible competitor. The 1988 record followed him through every appointment.
Sources
- Human Rights Watch on the 1988 prison massacres and Raisi’s role
- Amnesty International, Blood-Soaked Secrets: Iran’s 1988 prison massacres, 2018
- Reuters on Raisi’s death in the May 2024 helicopter crash
- US Treasury sanctions on Ebrahim Raisi, 4 November 2019 (EO 13876)
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