Iranian politics turns a new leaf with the conservative Ebrahim Raisi assuming Presidency.
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Ebrahim Raisi formally becomes the President of Iran
- The story: On 03rd August, 2021, Ebrahim Raisi was inaugurated as the President of Iran. The country hopes to shake off a dire economic crisis by reviving a nuclear deal with world powers. Iran is a regional and middle power, with a strategic location in the Asian continent. It is a founding member of the United Nations, the ECO, the OIC, and the OPEC. It has large reserves of fossil fuels.
- The person: Raisi is a conservative, and replaces the moderate President Hassan Rouhani, whose landmark achievement was the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and six major powers, viz. the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).
- Raisi will now have to tackle negotiations aimed at reviving the nuclear deal from which the U.S. unilaterally withdrew imposing sweeping sanctions. He had hoped that things would be over before he takes charge, but it didn't happen.
- The 60-year-old also faces the United States, Britain and Israel’s warnings to Iran over a deadly tanker attack in July, for which Tehran denies responsibility.
- Raisi, in his inauguration speech, said the new government would seek to lift “oppressive” U.S. sanctions, but would “not tie the nation’s standard of living to the will of foreigners”.
- Supreme leader Khamenei acknowledged Iran suffered from “many shortcomings and problems”, and said that “The country’s capabilities are even more numerous. Fixing economic problems takes time and cannot be done overnight.”
- Election 2021: Raisi won a presidential election in June '21 in which more than half the electorate stayed away after many heavyweights were barred from standing. A former judiciary chief, he has been criticised by the West for his human rights record. Raisi’s presidency will consolidate power in the hands of conservatives following their 2020 parliamentary election victory, marked by the disqualification of thousands of reformist or moderate candidates.
- Trump's withdrawal: The 2015 nuclear deal saw Iran accept curbs on its nuclear capabilities in return for an easing of sanctions. But then U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the accord three years later and ramped up sanctions again, prompting Tehran to pull back from most of its nuclear commitments. But Trump's maximum pressure strategy didn't work, as Iran simply resisted silently (more or less). Trump’s successor Joe Biden has signalled his readiness to return to the deal and engaged in indirect negotiations with Iran alongside formal talks with the accord’s remaining parties — Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia. The U.S. sanctions have choked Iran and its vital oil exports.
- Attacks: Meanwhile, Iran-backed forces may have captured an oil tanker off the coast of the United Arab Emirates on 03rd August, and the target was the Panama-flagged Asphalt Princess, heading to an Omani port. Iran denied any involvement, and dismissed the reports as “a kind of psychological warfare and setting the stage for new bouts of adventurism.” The incident came as Iran was accused of carrying out another oil tanker attack off the Omani coast. On 03rd August, Britain, Liberia, and Romania said it was “highly likely” that Iranian drones were to blame for the deaths recently of two crew members aboard an oil tanker (in a letter to the United Nations Security Council). The United States and Britain have said they would respond to the attack, which Iran has also denied.
- Supreme leader of Iran: Mr. Khamenei has turned 81, and is not in the best of health. A body of Islamic jurists known as the Assembly of Experts will choose his successor; in the interregnum, a provisional council that includes the president, the chief justice and a representative of the Guardian Council will run Iran. For years, Khamenei has been packing these positions with loyalists, to ensure the next Supreme Leader is cut from the same cloth as himself. Many assume that Khamenei regards Raisi as his logical successor. They both come from the countryside near the eastern metropolis of Mashhad, and received some education in the seminaries of the holy city of Qom, where they seem to have engaged more in politics than in theology. Raisi’s standing with hardliners was burnished when the Trump administration recognized him as a member of Khamenei’s “inner circle,” and imposed economic sanctions on him. That’s another thing he has in common with the Supreme Leader.
- Iranian revolution: The 1979 Iranian Revolution was the Shia Islamic revolution that ended the secular monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi with a theocracy. It was led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. There were many reasons, including a conservative backlash opposing the westernization, modernization and secularization efforts of the Western-backed Shah. Today, the Government of Iran is an Islamic theocracy which includes elements of a presidential democracy, with final authority vested in the "Supreme Leader", a position held by Ali Khamenei since Khomeini's death in 1989.
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