The Iranian president’s death will have at least a short-term effect, but the system that has ruled Iran since 1979 will find a way to churn on.
People hold posters of Iran President Ebrahim Raisi during a mourning ceremony in downtown Tehran on May 20, 2024.
Notables of the Iranian state will mourn the loss, but it’s hard to overstate just how ruthless Raisi was. He was an Islamic Republic insider through and through, a highly conservative jurist who joined the country’s judicial system. Raisi rose quickly, becoming the deputy prosecutor for Tehran and eventually serving on a panel focused on the charging and sentencing of dissidents.
The Iranian establishment will no doubt spend the next several days honoring Raisi’s extensive service. For good reason — he was a ruthless enforcer of the Iranian government’s agenda. Raisi was a particular favorite of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has held the office for the last 35 years. In fact, the main reason Raisi was elected president three years ago was because Khamenei prevented more appealing alternatives from running.
Iran was never a free society, even before the advent of the Islamic Republic, but it got noticeably less free under Raisi’s watch. In September 2022, after the so-called morality police detained and beat a young woman, Mahsa Amini, to death for the way she dressed, thousands of Iranians came out to protest the Iranian government’s social laws. Raisi wasted little time calling in police to brutally suppress the protesters. According to one human rights group,U.S.
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