Ebrahim Raisi

Overview

Ebrahim Raisi was a cleric and senior official of the Islamic Republic who served as president of Iran from 2021 until his death in 2024. He rose through prosecution and the judiciary under Ruhollah Khomeini and Ali Khamenei. His record includes service on a four-member commission that presided over mass executions of political prisoners in 1988. He later led an influential religious endowment, headed the judiciary during a deadly protest crackdown, and won a presidential election shaped by extensive candidate disqualifications and low turnout.

Raisi’s presidency joined domestic repression with closer ties to Russia and continued support for armed organizations across the Middle East. His government enforced compulsory veiling, persecuted the Baháʼí community, and maintained the regime’s backing for the terrorist organizations Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. Raisi maintained that the regime’s regional activities and missile program were outside the scope of negotiation. His death in a helicopter crash ended a career that had also placed him within institutions involved in selecting Iran’s supreme leader.

Early life

Raisi was born on December 14, 1960, into a Persian clerical family in the Noghan district of Mashhad. His father, Seyed Haji, died when Raisi was five. After primary education at Javadiyeh school, Raisi began religious studies. At age 15 he entered the seminary in Qom. He also studied briefly at Navvab school and at the school of Ayatollah Sayyed Muhammad Mousavi Nezhad, where he taught other students while continuing his own studies.

His religious rank became a subject of public scrutiny later in his career. Raisi described himself as an ayatollah, but questions about his credentials appeared in Iranian media. He subsequently used the rank hojat-ol-eslam before again presenting himself as an ayatollah shortly before the 2021 presidential election. His clerical identity and long service in state institutions were central to his public standing, but his route to national power began in prosecution rather than religious scholarship.

Raisi married Jamileh Alamolhoda, and they had two daughters. Her father, Ahmad Alam al-Hoda, was a Khamenei appointee in Razavi Khorasan. That family connection became politically significant when Khamenei later placed Raisi in charge of Mashhad’s powerful shrine endowment and appointed Alam al-Hoda to a prominent provincial role.

Career

Raisi became a prosecutor in Karaj at about age 20, later worked in Hamedan, and was appointed deputy prosecutor of Tehran in 1985. These posts placed him within the Islamic Republic’s judicial system during its early years, when prosecution was closely tied to the consolidation of the new regime. In 1988, Khomeini issued an order sentencing political prisoners to death. Commissions then determined the fates of prisoners held across the country. Raisi served on the four-member commission associated with Evin and Gohardasht prisons.

Iranian authorities murdered at least 5,000 political prisoners during the summer 1988 executions. Many of those killed had not previously received death sentences. Raisi’s role did not depend on whether he held the title of chief judge: he sat on a commission that presided over decisions leading to executions. In a recorded meeting that year, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri condemned the commission’s conduct. Raisi publicly defended the executions in 2018, describing them as a proud achievement. His participation in the killings remained a defining feature of his public record.

After Khomeini’s death and Khamenei’s accession as supreme leader, Raisi served as Tehran prosecutor from 1989 to 1994. He then became head of Iran’s General Inspection Office. He was first deputy chief justice from 2004 to 2014 and attorney general from 2014 until 2016. These successive appointments kept him near the center of the regime’s legal and security institutions for decades. He also held seats on the Expediency Council and Assembly of Experts, bodies connected to major state decisions and the selection of a supreme leader.

In 2016, Khamenei appointed Raisi chairman and custodian of Astan Quds Razavi, the foundation associated with Mashhad’s Imam Reza Shrine. Raisi reported directly to Khamenei. The appointment put him in charge of substantial religious trusts, property, assets and budgets, and raised his profile beyond the judiciary. During his chairmanship, Astan Quds Razavi produced a 50-part film promoting The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an antisemitic forgery. His leadership of the foundation also strengthened his position within the regime’s political and religious establishment.

Raisi ran for president in May 2017 but lost to Hassan Rouhani, who received more than 23 million votes against Raisi’s 16 million. Khamenei appointed Raisi head of the judiciary in March 2019. Later that year, nationwide protests met a violent crackdown. Security forces killed hundreds of people, while thousands faced mass arrest, secret detention or torture. Under Raisi, the judiciary shielded officials and security personnel from accountability for those abuses. His tenure as judiciary chief further linked his career to the suppression of political dissent.

Raisi won the 2021 presidential election after the Guardian Council disqualified most prospective rivals. About 600 people, including 40 women, sought to run; only seven men were approved, and three withdrew before voting. Turnout was 48.8 percent. Those conditions limited the significance of his victory as a measure of broad public support. His first cabinet included 12 sanctioned officials, more than any previous cabinet of the Islamic Republic. Some held central security and economic portfolios. Khamenei had personally approved key appointments related to national security.

Ideology and statements

Raisi aligned himself with Khamenei’s approach to the Islamic Republic’s internal security and regional policy. Following his 2021 election, he declared that the regime’s activities across the Middle East and its missile program were not open to negotiation. He supported the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and opposed concessions that would restrict Iran’s regional reach. His place in the Assembly of Experts and his close relationship with Khamenei led observers to regard him as a possible successor to the supreme leader, although no succession occurred before Raisi’s death.

His treatment of the 1988 executions showed continuity between his prosecutorial past and his later public positions. Rather than repudiate the mass killing, Raisi defended it in 2018. His presidency likewise retained coercive rules governing women’s public lives. In August 2022, he signed a decree increasing punishments for violations of compulsory veiling rules. Enforcement brought study suspensions and dormitory bans for women and girls, as well as fines or closures for businesses. The regime’s persecution of Baháʼís also escalated during his presidency. A March 2024 United Nations fact-finding report found that senior Iranian officials, including Raisi, had violated protesters’ human rights.

International reactions reflected those policies. In 2023, European Union members boycotted a ceremony marking the revolution’s 44th anniversary amid the suppression of protesters, although the Polish and Hungarian ambassadors attended. The contrast illustrated disagreement among foreign representatives over engagement with the regime during Raisi’s presidency. Within Iran, the compulsory-veiling campaign and response to protests showed how state policy, policing and the judiciary worked together to restrict personal freedom and dissent.

Role in attacks or conflicts

Raisi presided over an Iranian government that maintained support for armed organizations opposed to Israel. After his 2021 election, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah congratulated him and sought continued Iranian support. Hamas and Islamic Jihad also welcomed his victory and called for the regime’s backing to continue. Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad al-Nakhalah attended Raisi’s inauguration. Raisi’s declaration that regional activities were not negotiable reinforced the continuity of those relationships. Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are terrorist organizations.

His administration also pursued closer relations with Syria under Bashar al-Assad. On July 5, 2021, Raisi and Assad discussed expanding cooperation and maintaining coordination between their regimes. Raisi visited Damascus in May 2023, becoming the first Iranian president to visit Syria since 2010. During that trip, the governments signed 15 cooperation documents. These contacts formed part of Iran’s effort to maintain regional influence through allied governments and armed groups.

Russia became another important partner. Raisi traveled to Moscow on January 19, 2022, and met President Vladimir Putin during his first official trip abroad as president. The visit advanced plans for a 20-year strategic cooperation agreement. After Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Tehran hosted a summit bringing Raisi, Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan together. Under Raisi, the Iranian regime agreed to sell advanced drones to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine. Those developments showed the growing military and diplomatic importance of the relationship.

Raisi also engaged other regional governments. Abu Dhabi National Security Advisor Tahnoun bin Zayed visited the Iranian regime in December 2021 and invited Raisi to Abu Dhabi, before Houthi attacks in January 2022. Raisi attended a meeting in Riyadh in 2023, the first visit by an Iranian president to Saudi Arabia in many years. In September 2023, he called Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani to thank Iraq for helping organize Arbaeen ceremonies. These contacts took place alongside, rather than in place of, the regime’s support for its armed regional network.

That support extended to the Houthis in Yemen. On April 15, 2024, Raisi spoke by phone with Mahdi al-Mashat and praised Houthi efforts to exert economic pressure on Israel. His government’s regional policy also drew scrutiny through cabinet appointments: two cabinet members faced Interpol Red Notices concerning involvement in the 1994 AMIA Jewish community center bombing, which killed 85 people. Those notices concerned the individuals’ alleged roles in an earlier attack; their presence in Raisi’s cabinet demonstrated the continued prominence of sanctioned and internationally sought figures within the regime.

Death or current status

On May 19, 2024, Raisi traveled to Iran’s border with Azerbaijan to meet the Azerbaijani president and inaugurate a dam. His helicopter crashed during the return journey. Raisi and the other people aboard, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, died. The crash ended Raisi’s presidency less than three years after his election and removed a figure who had been discussed as a possible successor to Khamenei.

During events surrounding Raisi’s funeral in Tehran on May 23, 2024, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Hossein Salami and Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani met leaders of the Iranian regime’s regional network. Their meeting underscored the network’s place in the regime Raisi had served. His death also set in motion a presidential transition. Later cabinet nominations by Masoud Pezeshkian included seven former ministers or deputy ministers from Rouhani’s governments and six from Raisi’s government, showing that figures from Raisi’s administration remained active in national politics.

Legacy

Raisi’s career spanned the Islamic Republic’s prosecution system, judiciary, religious endowments and presidency. His ascent rested on repeated appointments by senior regime leaders, especially Khamenei. The 1988 death commission stands at the center of his record: Raisi participated in a process that sent thousands of political prisoners to their deaths, including prisoners who had received no death sentence, and later defended the killings publicly. His subsequent authority over the judiciary during the 2019 protest crackdown tied that earlier record to another period of severe state violence.

As president, Raisi enforced restrictions on women, oversaw intensified persecution of Baháʼís, and maintained support for Hezbollah, Hamas and other armed partners. His government strengthened ties with Russia as Moscow waged war against Ukraine, while also pursuing diplomatic contacts across the Middle East. The disqualification of most rivals and 48.8 percent turnout in 2021 remain essential context for his election. Together, his record in the courts, his domestic policies and his regional alliances define his place in the history of Iran’s regime.