Iran’s New President Earned His Post with Bloodshed https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/politics-current-affairs/2021/06/irans-new-president-earned-his-post-with-bloodshed/

June 21, 2021 | Tzvi Kahn
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On Saturday, Ebraham Raisi was announced the victor in the Islamic Republic’s presidential election—winning 62 percent of the vote, according to the regime’s official numbers. While subordinate to the unelected supreme leader, the Iranian president is formally the chief executive, and the face the country presents to the world. Raisi rose to prominence in the 1980s as Iran’s prosecutor general, in which capacity he played a key role in the execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988. Tzvi Kahn writes:

Raisi . . . facilitated the 1988 slaughter by serving on a four-member panel known as a Death Commission, which decided who would live and who would die. The commission would conduct interviews of prisoners—often just a few minutes long—aimed at determining their loyalty to the Islamic Republic. . . . The executions . . . typically took place the same day as the interrogations. The commissions allowed neither lawyers nor appeals. Burials occurred in unmarked mass graves. The regime waited months before notifying the relatives of the victims, refused to tell them the locations of the bodies, and told them not to mourn in public.

During [2009’s failed] Green Revolution, Raisi served as deputy chief justice, making him complicit in the prosecution—and, in some cases, the death sentences—of peaceful protesters who objected to Iran’s fraudulent election.

In 2019, the Trump administration sanctioned Raisi, citing his conduct in the 1988 massacre and the 2009 protests. Now, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has indicated that the Biden administration may lift some non-nuclear sanctions on Iran in order to persuade Tehran to reenter the 2015 nuclear deal. The regime, for its part, has pressed America’s negotiators to lift all nuclear and non-nuclear sanctions, which would include a removal of Raisi from the blacklist. The Biden administration should resist such pressure.

Read more on RealClear World: https://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2021/06/16/irans_leading_presidential_candidate_has_committed_crimes_against_humanity_781789.html