Ebrahim Raisi was born in 1960 and raised in Mashhad, the city that is home to Iran's holiest Shiite shrine. Coming from a clerical family, Raisi participated in the 1979 revolution, which overthrew the Western-backed Shah, when he was still a teenager. He studied at the seminary of Qom, the center of Shiite learning, and later obtained a doctorate in jurisprudence and Islamic law from Shahid Motahari University in Tehran. He wears a black turban, a sign of his descent from the family of the prophet Muhammad.
In the early 1980s, Raisi became a prosecutor, working first in Karaj and Hamadan. In 1985 he was appointed Deputy Prosecutor General of Tehran. He is known for his key role in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988. At just 27 years old, he was the youngest of four members of Tehran's so-called “Death Committee”, established by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. In July 1988, Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering the execution of all prisoners who supported the opposition and were considered enemies of God.
Raisi served as Tehran's attorney general from 1989 to 1994 and led the Organization for General Inspection from 1994 to 2004, tasked with investigating corruption and financial wrongdoing. From 2004 to 2014, he held the position of first deputy head of the judiciary. In 2006 he was elected to the Assembly of Experts, responsible for appointing and supervising the supreme leader. After the disputed 2009 presidential election, which led to mass protests, Raisi advocated brutal repression and mass incarceration and murder. He was Iran's attorney general from 2014 to 2016.
In 2016, Supreme Leader Khamenei appointed him as custodian of Astan Quds Razavi, a charitable foundation with assets valued in billions of dollars, a position he held for three years. In the 2017 presidential election, Raisi came second with 38% of the vote, losing to incumbent President Hassan Rouhani, who received 57% of the vote. In 2019, Khamenei appointed him as Iran's chief justice and deputy head of the Assembly of Experts.
Raisi won the 2021 Iranian presidential election, a vote that saw the lowest turnout in the history of the Islamic Republic and was sanctioned by the United States in part for his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq war. Under Raisi, Iran now enriches uranium to near-nuclear levels and obstructs all international inspections. Iran, like North Korea, has armed Russia in its war against Ukraine, as well as launching a massive drone and missile attack against Israel in the context of its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It has also continued to finance and arm terrorist groups in the Middle East, such as Yemen's Houthi rebels and Lebanon's Hezbollah as well as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Ebrahim Raisi is also the one who has gripped the country in terror and in particular women. The condition of women in Iran is based on four pillars: hatred, contempt, violence and hypocrisy. To fully understand it, it is essential to examine their role in the Islamic Penal Code. This code, initially introduced in the form of a fatwa after the 1979 Khomeini revolution and later codified into law, includes extremely violent corporal punishment. It also allows political power to interfere in people's private spheres, justifying such intrusions as fighting “moral crimes” and thus remaining under constant scrutiny. This context not only promotes violence against women, but in some cases even denies them the fundamental right to life.
