The president was both a revered and a controversial figure in Iran – while his administration was ended by a series of mass protests, he was seen as a frontrunner to succeed the supreme leader.
Mr Raisi was a hardliner and former head of the judiciary who some suggested could one day replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Because of his part in the sentencing of thousands of prisoners of conscience to death back in the 1980s, he was nicknamed the Butcher of Tehran as he sat on the so-called Death Panel, for which he was then sanctioned by the US.
He has supported the country’s security services as they cracked down on all dissent, including in the aftermath of the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini.
Ms Amini died after she was arrested for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly, and a United Nations investigative panel later found that Iran was responsible for the “physical violence” that she endured.
Mr Raisi also supported Iran’s unprecedented decision in April to launch a drone and missile attack on Israel amid its war with Hamas, the ruling militant group in Gaza responsible for the 7 October attacks which saw 1,200 people killed in southern Israel.
Iran has armed Russia in its war on Ukraine and has continued arming proxy groups in the Middle East, such as Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
He successfully ran for the presidency back in August 2021 in a vote that got the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history as all of his potentially prominent opponents were barred from running under Iran’s vetting system.
A presidency run in 2017 saw him lose to Hassan Rouhani, the relatively moderate cleric who as president reached Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
