The dilemma for the Biden administration may not be the potential for arms control but how to deal with a mass murderer facing a mass uprising.
in its history. Boring because the election was rigged virtually from the start. What made it consequential is not because the winner,, is a gruesome and unapologetic killer who has spent his entire career inside the regime’s coercive institutions. Nor is it because Raisi is the first Iran ian president to fit that description. Both former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Hassan Rouhani , the current president, were instrumental in building and using the Iran ian police state.
that displaced the Pahlavi monarchy soon collapsed, with competing factions fighting on the streets. Amid this power struggle, Khomeini needed enforcers — men who had little compunction about ordering death sentences in religious tribunals. While still in his early 20s, Raisi was appointed prosecutor of Karaj, near Tehran, which saw its share of opposition activity and, after his arrival, executions by firing squad. Thus began his career on the republic’s dark side.
The regime learned lessons from the Green Movement. Stuffing ballot boxes provoked million-man marches on the streets of Tehran; henceforth, the theocracy would manipulate elections by narrowing the choice of candidates. In the 2021 election, Khamenei sacrificed popular legitimacy to ensure that a reliable disciple won. After the protest movements of 2017-2020, when even the poor started taking to the streets to express their anger, an elderly supreme leader likely wanted to see a version of himself in the presidency — a cleric with a proven capacity to repress and liquidate those willing to challenge the theocracy.
Sign up for the Opinions Essay newsletter to get the next installment in our long-form series in your inbox when it’s published Raisi is an awkward, perhaps paralyzing, problem for the Biden administration’s diplomatic strategy. First, there is the issue of human rights, which the White House says is a new priority for the United States. A revived Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which would release tens of billions of dollars in sanctions relief, will perforce be transacted with a new president who was sanctioned by the U.S.
Ali Khameini Ayatollah Khomeini Iran Shah Tehran Rahbar Rafsanjani Rouhani Montazeri Khatami Ahmandinejad Green Movement Agnes Callemard
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