Topline
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, an ultra-conservative with a history of atrocity accusations who is widely considered a potential future supreme leader of Iran, remains missing Sunday afternoon after a helicopter transporting him and several other government officials crashed in a rural area of the country and could not be located due to fog and bad weather, state news agencies reported.
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi.
Getty Images
Key Facts
At least 40 search and rescue teams were dispatched to the northwestern province of East Azarbaijan in search of the helicopter Sunday, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported, which was carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
Raisi assumed the presidency in 2021 following an election that was widely protested over claims it was rigged in favor of the conservative, who was ultimately victorious with 62% of the votes cast (it was the lowest turnout for an Iranian election in four decades).
Raisi is a political ally to Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader and most powerful political and religious authority in Iran, and the current president has been largely seen as a likely successor to the position.
Since he was elected, Raisi has worked to expand Iran’s influence in the Middle East, while governing through a severe economic crisis and a historic escalation of the country’s conflict with Israel, which recently put the countries on the brink of war.
Enforcement of Iran’s “hijab and chastity law” has sharply increased under Raisi’s administration—he has faced massive anti-government protests around the deaths of Mahsa Amini and Armita Geravand, both of whom died after allegedly violating the hijab law—and restricted women’s rights to sexual and reproductive healthcare in attempts to raise the population.
Raisi has been sanctioned by the US since 2019 after the Treasury Department accused him of participating in decades of human rights violations, including the execution of children in Iran, imprisonment of prominent human rights lawyers and executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.
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Who Is Iran’s Vice President?
Iran’s first vice president, Mohammad Mokhber, is in line for the presidency and would take over if Raisi died while in office, Reuters reported. A leadership council that includes the speaker of parliament and the head of the judiciary has 50 days to arrange for an election for a new president if a president dies in office.
Key Background
Raisi, 63, was a religious scholar who began to rise up in the government after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which toppled the country’s monarchy and established a new political system based on Islamic, or Sharia, law. Since the revolution, women have been largely banned from higher education institutions, the marriage age was lowered to 9 for girls (it was raised to 13 in 2002) and tens of thousands of political prisoners have been executed, many of them while Raisi worked in the country’s judiciary. Raisi served as the prosecutor general of Tehran between 1989 and 1994, when he earned the nickname “Butcher of Tehran.” He participated in a so-called death commission that ordered the executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988. He was then appointed as chair of the General Inspection Office, which oversees the legality of the government, in 1994 before moving up the ranks of the judicial system to ultimately become the country’s chief justice. Raisi ran for president in 2017 and lost before being elected in 2021.
Tangent
The “Woman Life Freedom” uprising that began in September of 2022 has taken place under Raisi’s administration. The campaign was sparked by the death of Amini, who died in police custody after she was arrested for not wearing the hijab. The phrase became a rallying cry that was echoed around the world and the main slogan of mass protests that have led to the deaths of hundreds in Iran and the imprisonment of thousands more. The use of the death penalty to instill fear in the aftermath of the “Woman Life Freedom” uprising has been condemned and studied by human rights organizations, including an Amnesty International report titled “‘Don’t Let Them Kill Us’: Iran’s Relentless Execution Crisis Since the 2022 Uprising.” Last year, Iran recorded 853 executions, the highest in a single year since 2015.
Further Reading
ForbesHelicopter Carrying Iranian President Missing After Reported CrashBy Mary Whitfill Roeloffs
ForbesIran’s Economic War On The WestBy Simon ConstableForbesWhat Does The Iran-Israel Conflict Show The Emerging World?By Mike O’SullivanForbesA Nobel Peace Prize Winner Was Refused Medical Care In Prison Because She Wouldn’t Wear A Headscarf. Now, she’s on a Hunger Strike.By Mary Whitfill RoeloffsForbesIranian Teenager Armita Geravand Is ‘Brain Dead’ After Alleged Assault By Police Over HijabBy Mary Whitfill Roeloffs
