distributed to pilgrims to the shrine.
Raisi was named as one of the Popular Front of Islamic Revolution Forces (JAMNA)’s presidential candidates in February 2017. He was defeated decisively by incumbent President Hassan Rouhani.
In 2021, Raisi ran again for the presidency and won the election. Most other candidates were disqualified beforehand and his victory was a foregone conclusion, which largely explained the low turnout (48.8%).
Raisi supports sex segregation. He said in a 2014 interview about a planned segregation in the Tehran Municipality that “I think this is a good move because the majority of women do a better job in a totally relaxed atmosphere and fit are required.” He is also a supporter of Islamization of universities, revision of the Internet, and censorship of Western culture.
Ali Vaez, the Iran director for the International Crisis Group, called Mr. Raisi a “tested and loyal apparatchik” who “owes his entire political career to Khamenei.”
Raisi also has been associated with the anti-Semitism pedaled by the regime. He has, for example, played a role in promoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion “as part of a sustained campaign to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish people,” according to the ADL’s Jonathan. Greenblatt. “Raisi’s track record shows us that an obsessive hatred of Israel is not an abstraction but a major feature of his career.”
Greenblatt noted that in 2020, Raisi claimed “America and ‘global Zionism’ are plotting to subjugate all Muslims, pulling the strings of a global media empire, hatching devious plans in think tanks and conspiring to insult the Prophet Muhammad.”
The United States imposed sanctions on Raisi in 2019 over his human rights record, which included “administrative oversight over the executions of individuals who were juveniles at the time of their crime and the torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of prisoners in Iran, including amputations.” He was also accused of involvement in the regime’s brutal crackdown on Iran’s Green Movement protests in 2009. In 2019, he was running the judiciary when hundreds of peaceful unarmed demonstrators protested the price of gas. At least 7,000 were arrested, tortured, and sentenced to long prison terms.
The sanctions could interfere with U.S. relations with Iran, and negotiations over a return to the nuclear agreement (JCPOA) as they prohibit any dealings with him. The talks are also complicated by the optics of providing sanctions relief to a regime guilty of crimes against humanity when the Biden administration has made human rights a focus of its foreign policy. Given Raisi’s hardline attitude, and close relationship with Khamenei, President Biden also cannot claim, as President Obama did, that an agreement will moderate Iranian policy or improve relations.
When asked about his record, Raisi said, “I am proud of being a defender of human rights and of people’s security and comfort as a prosecutor wherever I was. All actions I carried out during my office were always in the direction of defending human rights.”
Raisi is married to Jamileh Alamolhoda. They have two daughters.