Raisi consolidates hard-line grip

TEHRAN: Iran’s announcement at the weekend of a resounding election victory by Ebrahim Raisi, the ultraconservative judiciary chief, signaled a stunning consolidation of power, handing the elected leadership back to hard-liners and sidelining reformists who negotiated a nuclear deal with global powers and advocated greater engagement with the West.

The victory by Raisi also showed the determination of Iran’s conservative establishment, including its security and intelligence agencies, to eliminate any political challenge at a critical moment, analysts said.

Among the potential landmark moments ahead: reckoning with who would succeed the 82-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is seen as a mentor to Raisi.

Some experts speculated about whether the return to unity at the top - Khamenei’s ruling clerics and the political structure around Raisi - could become a permanent fixture in Iran and the country’s relatively vibrant election contests could be a thing of the past. For Friday’s election, most moderates were barred by the ruling establishment, leaving many voters frustrated and turnout apparently low.

Raisi’s win, however, was not expected to derail negotiations currently underway in Vienna between Tehran and world powers to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. Khamenei has allowed Iran to reopen the dialogue and appears ready to keep it going in efforts to lift international sanctions.

But the longer-term impact on Iran’s relationships with Europe and the United States was far less clear.

Raisi, 60, a fixture of Iran’s hardline establishment since his 20s, is viewed as an acolyte of the supreme leader and has been floated in the past as a possible successor. Human rights groups have linked him to numerous episodes of repression over decades and said he played a central role in mass killings of dissidents in the late 1980s.

Raisi, who unsuccessfully ran for president in 2017, has cast himself as an anti-corruption crusader, while critics have accused him of using corruption as a fig leaf to eliminate rivals.

He will replace President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate whose government signed the 2015 nuclear accord with the United States and other world powers.

Later, Rouhani was left facing the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure campaign” aimed at crippling Iran’s economy using sanctions and other measures. Trump withdrew the United States from the nuclear accord in 2018.

Raisi has expressed a willingness to revive the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, in line with Khamenei’s wishes. But his presidency seemed certain to mark a radical departure from the Rouhani era, with little prospect of liberalizing domestic reforms or any broadening of Tehran’s relationship with the West, analysts said.

Iran’s Guardian Council, which approves candidates seeking office, last month disqualified several prominent politicians who might have challenged Raisi. (Rouhani was term-limited from running again.) Critics called it an unusually brazen effort by the clerical establishment to engineer the election results.

Half of the council’s members are clerics appointed by the supreme leader, and the other half are jurists nominated by the head of the judiciary. Raisi nominated three of the council’s members.

Rouhani, who soundly defeated Raisi in the 2017 presidential election to secure a second term, congratulated the judiciary chief.

“I hope that with your efforts and with more cooperation by all the pillars and forces of the country, in these critical times, we will see effective actions for the progress and development of the country,” he said in a statement.

In the run-up to the election, Iran’s reformists vigorously debated whether to vote or boycott it, given the widespread perception that the contest was fixed in Raisi’s favour. As the balloting got underway, some fervent boycotters harassed Iranians who decided to vote, by posting their pictures online.

There were also ugly scenes at some overseas polling stations. |