Ebrahim Raisi isn’t who you think he is

In Iran, the final pieces have fallen into place for a momentous power grab, with potentially far-reaching consequences for the country and its relations with the rest of the world. Judiciary chief Ebrahim Raisi has emerged victorious in this weekend’s election for the presidency, as expected, and is thus entitled to a four-year term in that office. But he will also be widely recognized as the presumed successor to Ali Khamenei as the next supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, a position he may occupy for life.

But if it’s suddenly important to understand Raisi’s worldview, it’s also not easy to gain access to it. Internationally, Raisi is widely referred to as a “hardliner,” but that is a label that obscures as much as it reveals. To reduce Raisi to a zealot is to miss the most overriding component of his political persona: his shrewd opportunism. This is the quality that best explains his rise—and best predicts his style of leadership going forward.

Significantly, Raisi emerged as the overwhelming frontrunner in the presidential vote, not by rallying the public with a compelling vision, but in large part because the field was effectively cleared for him by close political allies. In late May, the 12-member Guardian Council, Iran’s election watchdog, many of whose members are associated with Raisi, barred prominent moderate and pro-reform figures from running in the race. Some still clung to the hope that Khamenei would eventually intervene, just as he had done in 2005, to reinstate some of the disqualified candidates. Khamenei eventually called on the Guardian Council to “make amends” for its “unjust” conduct, but without demanding any specific candidate to be reinstated; the Guardian Council’s response to this plea was a platitudinal statement devoid of any real substance.

Understandably, a great deal of commentary on Raisi focuses primarily on his reputation earned as a member in the aptly named “Death Committee” that oversaw the secret execution of thousands of political prisoners in the summer of 1988, described by eminent historian Ervand Abrahamian as “an act of violence unprecedented in Iranian history—unprecedented in form, content, and intensity.” Courtesy of an audio recording that first went viral in August 2016, many Iranians now associate Raisi with this dark chapter of their country’s history. In the infamous tape, he and other committee members come under a blistering attack from the late Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri for their role in the executions. Raisi is heard as he haggles with Montazeri, deputy supreme leader at the time, to obtain permission for the execution of 200 additional prisoners. An audibly scandalized Montazeri flatly refuses to grant any legitimacy to the men’s deeds, calling the executions the most serious crime in the history of the Revolution.

If elected, Raisi will govern in cognizance that his presidency is the outcome of an election designed to ensure his victory. Indeed, his reaction to the Guardian Council’s vetting of candidates shows he has already taken note of the embarrassing optics of a race so flagrantly rigged in his favor: Shortly after the final list of candidates was announced, Raisi claimed he had been lobbying to make the elections more competitive. (One cannot help but question the sincerity of this claim given Raisi’s close association with those in charge of the vetting process.) Mindful that it lacks the support of large swathes of the population, a Raisi administration may also find itself lacking the confidence to withstand censure, making it more likely to lash out heavy-handedly at critics.

Should the current Supreme Leader Khamenei, now 82, pass away during a Raisi presidency, the cleric will be in a unique position to greatly influence the process of picking the next leader—so much so that he himself will be one of the favorites to succeed Khamenei. He will at once be kingmaker and potential king. This reality will likely humble the various political actors into meekness and dampen the resolve of would-be dissenters. And with the prospect of succeeding the current leader in sight, the future president will have every incentive to fight tooth and nail to consolidate and expand power, making it all the more likely that he will rule with an iron fist.

Iran’s public diplomacy will be one of the first casualties of a Raisi presidency. For many both inside and outside Iran, his name is forever tainted by the 1988 executions. If an anti-Iran axis similar to the one spearheaded by former President Donald Trump reemerges in the coming years, it will find a powerful propaganda tool personified by the Iranian president himself. Demonizing the country and forming an international consensus against it will be far easier than it has been during the Rouhani years.

This is not mere conjecture. During Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency, from 2005 to 2013, his bellicose harangues on topics such as Israel and the Holocaust proved immensely useful in isolating Iran on the world stage. So marked was Ahmadinejad’s utility as Israel’s favourite scarecrow that former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy called him “our greatest gift.” “We couldn’t carry out a better operation at the Mossad than to put a guy like Ahmadinejad in power in Iran,” Halevy professed. Ahmadinejad, he gloated, had “proved to everyone that Iran of today is an Iran that is impossible to live with. [Ahmadinejad] unites the entire world against Iran.”

Though Raisi’s investiture will most likely be followed by a change at the helm of Iran’s foreign policy, a certain level of continuity is to be expected at the level of grand strategy. For instance, during the last round of the televised presidential debates, Raisi explicitly reaffirmed Iran’s commitment to implementing the JCPOA: “We are committed to the JCPOA … but the JCPOA needs a strong government to implement it.” Continuity is also borne out of the fact that the government is not the sole determinant of foreign policy. Iran’s Leader exerts immense influence over matters of national security, including foreign policy.

But the mere existence of a strategy, on JCPOA or otherwise, is one thing. Its successful meting out, which requires competent diplomats and technocrats, is quite another. Regardless of the foreign policy outlook of Raisi’s team, the shortage of skilled diplomats in key positions could potentially disrupt the gears of the country’s diplomacy. This very scenario became a reality during the presidency of Ahmadinejad when Manouchehr Mottaki, currently a foreign policy aide to Raisi, assumed the role of Iran’s top diplomat. During this period, a lack of technocratic competence could at times undermine the very strategy it was meant to implement.

If Raisi’s career proves anything, it’s that he has carefully cultivated powerful allies and he will not lightly abide being denied a path to power, even if it disrupts Iran’s existing political order. A crucial question is what will happen if the ultimate guardian of the present system Khamenei—the man Raisi might one day hope to succeed—attempts, or is able, to get in his way.

* Sajjad Safaei is a postdoc fellow at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology