File image of Iran President Ebrahim Raisi.
The 64-year-old late Iranian president Ebrahim Rais was known for his hardline views, having previously run as a conservative candidate against moderates and reformists.
In 2017, he ran against incumbent reformist president Hassan Rouhani as the candidate of the Popular Front of Islamic Revolution Forces, a conservative coalition.
While he lost to Rouhani in 2017, he won the 2021 presidential election when the country’s Guardian Council, which selects candidates for office, rejected the candidacies of 32 reformist and moderate lawmakers ahead of the election.
Several analysts saw the council’s high-profile decision as paving the way for Raisi’s electoral success. Raisi, who has held high-profile positions such as Chief Justice of Iran, the head of the Islamic Republic’s legal system, is seen as a supporter of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Analysts have also seen him as a possible successor to the ageing supreme leader. Raisi has had a strong religious upbringing since childhood, having attended Qom Seminary, Iran’s largest Shia-majority theological academy.
Raisi has faced rising tensions throughout his administration, from the Ukraine conflict, in which Tehran has implicitly supported Russia by supplying Iranian drones to Moscow, to the ongoing Gaza conflict, in which Israel has accused its arch-foe of training and arming Hamas soldiers.
Raisi also directed Iran’s drone and missile attacks on Israel last month. Iran has continued to enrich uranium under Raisi, drawing criticism from Western and Israeli officials as tensions between Tehran and Washington have risen.
Raisi was sanctioned by the United States for serving as a prosecutor on a controversial judiciary commission in 1988.
As a result, he became the first Iranian president to be sanctioned by the United States.
Raisi’s government has also been widely criticized for its handling of the controversial imprisonment of Mahsa Amini, which resulted in her death and sparked large-scale protests across the country in late 2022.
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