Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, 63, dies in helicopter crash

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline protégé of the country's supreme leader who helped oversee the mass executions of thousands in 1988 and later led the country as it enriched uranium at near-weapons levels, launched a major attack on Israel and mass protests, is dead. He was 63 years old.

The death of Raïssi, as well as the Minister of Foreign Affairs and other officials a helicopter accident In northwest Iran on Sunday, Iran is grappling with internal dissension and relations with the rest of the world. Initially religious, Raisi embraced the Koran, the Islamic holy book, before the United Nations and spoke more like a preacher than a statesman when addressing the world.

Presidentwho lost the presidential election to relatively moderate incumbent President Hassan Rouhani in 2017, came to power four years later in a vote carefully engineered by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to eliminate any major candidate from the opposition.

His election comes at a time when relations between Tehran and Washington were particularly tense following Decision by US President Donald Trump in 2018 unilaterally withdraw America from a nuclear deal to limit Iran's uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief.

While Raisi has said he wants to reenter the deal with world powers, his new administration has instead opposed international inspections of nuclear facilities, in part because of an alleged sabotage campaign that Tehran has blamed on Israel. Talks aimed at restoring the deal remained stalled during the first months of his government.

“Sanctions are the United States’ new way of waging war against the nations of the world,” Raissi told the United Nations in September 2021. “The policy of ‘maximum oppression’ is still relevant today. We want nothing more than what is rightfully ours.

Mass protests swept the country in 2022 after the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman who was arrested because of her allegedly loose headscarf, or hijab. THE the security repression that lasted months after the demonstrations killed more than 500 people and more than 22,000 others were arrested.

In March, a United Nations commission of inquiry concluded that Iran was responsible for the “physical violence” that led to Amini's death.

Then came the current war between Israel and Hamas, in which Iranian-backed terrorists targeted Israel. Tehran itself launched an extraordinary attack against Israel in April, using hundreds of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. Israel, the United States and their allies shot down the shots, but it showed how intense the shadow war between Iran and Israel has been for years.

Born in Mashhad on December 14, 1960, Raisi was born into a family whose lineage dates back to Islam's prophet Muhammad, as indicated by the black turban he would later wear. His father died when he was 5 years old. He attended the seminary in the holy Shiite city of Qom and later described himself as an ayatollah, a high-ranking Shiite cleric.

In 1988, at the end of the long war between Iran and Iraq, Raisi served on what would become known as the “death commissions”, which handed down death sentences against political prisoners, activists and others. 'others. International rights groups estimate that up to 5,000 people were executed.

After Ruhollah Khomeini, then supreme leader of Iran, agreed to a UN-brokered ceasefire, members of the Iranian opposition group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, heavily armed by Iraq's Saddam Hussein, crossed the Iranian border in a surprise attack. Iran eventually blunted its assault, but the attack set the stage for the false trial.

Some participants were asked to identify themselves. Those who answered “mujahidin” were sent to death.

Raisi was defiant when asked at a press conference after his election about the executions.

“I am proud to be a defender of human rights and people's security and comfort as a prosecutor wherever I was,” said Raisi, who also served as Iran's attorney general for a certain time.

In 2016, Khamenei appointed Raisi to head the Imam Reza charitable foundation, which runs a conglomerate of companies and foundations in Iran. It is one of several bonyades, or charitable foundations, fueled by donations or property seized after Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.

These foundations do not publicly account for their spending and answer only to Iran's supreme leader. The Imam Reza charity, known as “Astan-e Quds-e Razavi” in Farsi, is considered one of the largest. Analysts estimate its value at tens of billions of dollars, as it owns almost half the land in Mashhad, Iran's second-largest city.

When appointing Raisi to the foundation, Khamenei called him “a trustworthy person with high-level experience.” This has led analysts to speculate that Khamenei could be grooming Raisi as a possible candidate to become Iran's third supreme leader, a Shiite cleric who has the final say on all state matters and serves as the country's commander-in-chief. .

Although Raïssi lost his 2017 campaign, he still received nearly 16 million votes. Khamenei appointed him to head Iran's internationally criticized justice system, long known for its closed-door trials of human rights activists and those with ties to the West. The US Treasury sanctioned Raisi in 2019 “for his administrative oversight of the executions of individuals who were minors at the time of their crime and for the torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment inflicted on prisoners in Iran, including amputations.”

In 2021, Raisi became the dominant figure in the election after a panel led by Khamenei disqualified candidates who posed the greatest challenge to his protégé. He received almost 62% of the 28.9 million votes in this election. Millions of people stayed home and others canceled their ballots, leading to the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic's history.

Raisi is survived by his wife and two daughters.