‘The Butcher of Tehran’: A Look at Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi

Raisi was aboard a helicopter that crashed in Iran’s mountainous northwest on its way back from the border with Azerbaijan. 

Ebrahim Raisi, the ultra hard-line Iranian president, has widely been viewed as an unstoppable power, the man who will be become the country’s next supreme leader. His future now is as unclear as his fate. As of late Sunday going into early Monday morning in Iran, the powerful politician is missing.

On May 19, a helicopter carrying Raisi crashed in Iran’s mountainous northwest on its way back from a visit to the border with Azerbaijan. The crash prompted a frantic search. Rescue crews were hampered by fog and, as the night wore on, darkness and rain.

The helicopter was on its way to the city of Tabriz when it went down near the city of Jolfa in what state television said was a “hard landing,” but several news reports quoted government sources as saying the helicopter crashed as it crossed a mountainous and forested area.

The Iranian government said the helicopter was one of three flying in a convoy, and the other two reportedly landed safely in Tabriz. The massive search operation continued after darkness as rescue teams searched on foot in heavy rain and fog, according to images posted by IRNA on X, formerly Twitter.

Raisi, a longtime protege of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is a former judicial chief who also allegedly played a role in one of the darkest chapters of the Islamic republic.

As president, the hard-line cleric has overseen the brutal suppression of the unprecedented monthslong antiestablishment protests that erupted in 2022 and the tightening of the country’s morality laws.

Hundreds were killed and thousands arrested as government forces crushed the demonstrations, one of the biggest challenges to the country’s clerical rulers in decades. Raisi defended the bloody crackdown and accused foreign powers and opposition groups of instigating the unrest.

‘Butcher Of Tehran’

Raisi attended seminary schools in the holy Shi’ite cities of Qom and Mashhad, where he was born in 1960. He later studied theology and Islamic jurisprudence under the guidance of Khamenei and other powerful clerics.

Raisi has been referred to by critics of the Islamic republic as the “Butcher of Tehran” for his alleged role in the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988 when he was Tehran’s deputy prosecutor.

In 1989, the year Khamenei became supreme leader, Raisi was named the Iranian capital’s top prosecutor. He remained in the role until 1994, when he was tasked with heading the State Inspectorate Organization, a judicial body, a post he held for 10 years.

In the 2017 presidential election, Raisi launched an unsuccessful bid against incumbent moderate President Hassan Rohani. Two years later, Raisi was appointed judiciary chief of Iran. That same year, the United States sanctioned Raisi and eight others deemed to be in Khamenei’s inner circle.

‘Impunity Reigns Supreme’

Raisi succeeded in his second bid for the presidency in 2021 in an election that was widely seen as a one-horse race. Scores of moderate and pro-reformist candidates were barred from running. The vote witnessed the lowest-ever turnout for a presidential election since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Observers noted that with Raisi, power was a given.

Raisi’s election consolidated the authority of the country’s hard-liners, which dominate all three branches of power in Iran. Under his administration, Iran has deepened relations with China and Russia and ramped up its confrontation with the West and Israel.

Raisi has been sanctioned by the United States in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq War.

Some reports have noted that because of international sanctions it has been difficult for Iran to obtain parts for its aging helicopter fleet.

Iranian law stipulates that if the president dies, power is transferred to the first vice president. A council consisting of the speaker of the Islamic Consultative Assembly, the head of the judicial power, and the first vice president must arrange for a new president to be elected within 50 days. The current first vice president of Iran is Mohammad Mokhber.

Based on reports from RFE’s Radio Farda.