Kian Sharifi
Ebrahim Raisi, the ultraconservative Iranian president, is widely tipped to become the country’s next supreme leader.
Raisi, a longtime protege of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is a former judicial chief who also allegedly played a role in one of the darkest chapters of the Islamic republic.
On May 19, a helicopter carrying Raisi crashed in Iran’s mountainous northwest on its way back from a visit to the border with Azerbaijan. His fate was not immediately clear.
As president, the hard-line cleric has overseen the brutal suppression of the unprecedented monthslong antiestablishment protests that erupted in 2022 and the tightening of the country’s morality laws.
Hundreds were killed and thousands arrested as government forces crushed the demonstrations, one of the biggest challenges to the country’s clerical rulers in decades. Raisi defended the bloody crackdown and accused foreign powers and opposition groups of instigating the unrest.
No comments:
Post a Comment