Inauguration of Ebrahim Raisi as the New President of Iran

August 3 is the day of the inauguration of Ebrahim Raisi as the new president of Iran. On the behest of ‎Khamenei, Raisi was appointed as president of Iran on June 18 in a sham election that was widely ‎boycotted by most Iranians. But more controversial than this appointment is his role in the 1988 ‎massacre of political prisoners. ‎ At the time, he, who was Tehran’s deputy prosecutor, was commissioned by Ruhollah Khomeini, along ‎with several others, to manage the situation of political prisoners and eliminate anyone who disagreed ‎with Khomeini. ‎ According to eyewitnesses of that massacre, who are rare, this committee is known as the death ‎committee almost emptied Iran’s prisons of political prisoners in a short period of time and handed over ‎more than 30,000 death sentences to political prisoners, who were executed and secretly buried in mass ‎graves, with no names or signs. ‎

Although the news of these crimes was divulged at the same time by some opponents of the regime, ‎especially the Mojahedin Khalq Organization(MEK), that about 90% of the victims were their members ‎or affiliates, but no one realized the scale of this crime. Only many years later when an audiotape of ‎Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri (Khomeini’s successor at the time), was released by his son, everyone ‎realized that the news was true and was shocked by the scale of this massacre. ‎

In that audiotape, Montazeri, who opposed the brutal massacre, in a meeting with members of the death ‎committee, including Ebrahim Raisi, said: “History will condemn us for this is the greatest crime ‎committed in the Islamic republic by you, and your names in future will be written as criminal in ‎history”.

Of course, Khomeini quickly removed Montazeri as his successor and placed him under house arrest for ‎his stance and opposition to the massacre.‎

Now, 33 years after that massacre, Ebrahim Raisi, who has followed Khamenei’s orders undisputedly ‎has been promoted from a young prosecutor to the presidency of the regime. But he sits in this position ‎at a time when Iran, because of institutionalized corruption in the clerical regime is in the most critical ‎state of its 42 years under the Mullahs. ‎ The catastrophic economic situation in which now 80% of people live below the poverty line. ‎Skyrocketing prices with inflation above 50%. Due to the mass closure of factories and production ‎centers 40% of university graduates are unemployed, which as a result many of whom emigrate abroad. ‎

According to research conducted by the World Bank, Iran loses more than $50 billion annually due to the emigration of university graduates. Iran’s revenue from oil sales in 2019 ‎was only $ 20 billion. ‎

There are also staggering statistics of addiction among the country’s youth, with a high percentage of ‎schoolgirls and boys whose almost all recreational facilities have been banned by the regime, causing ‎them to turn to drugs. ‎

The embezzlement of billions of dollars by the regime’s affiliates, so that now, on the one hand, Iran has ‎the highest number of millionaires in the Middle East, and on the other hand more than 50 million people ‎are living in poverty and cannot provide for their daily needs and about38 million of them have been ‎driven to the outskirts of cities and are living in shantytowns that do not have the basic facilities for ‎living. ‎ Ebrahim Raisi is taking over the presidency in a situation where nearly 340,000 people have lost their lives ‎due to the government’s failure to provide the Coronavirus vaccine and Khamenei’s opposition to ‎importing Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.

While most of the countries have vaccinated more than 60% of ‎their population, according to the Associated Press, less than 3% of Iran’s population has been fully ‎vaccinated. ‎ Iran is currently suffering from the fifth peak of this disease with Delta variation, and several hundred ‎people are falling victim to this crime perpetrated by the Iranian regime every day. ‎ He is taking over the helm of a bankrupt government at a time when almost every day we see mass ‎protests and strikes by workers and employees who are dissatisfied with their living conditions because ‎their income does not even cover one-third of their expenses and many have not even received the same ‎meager salary for several months. ‎

Recently, Iranians have also faced power and water outages in the scorching heat of summer, especially ‎in southern regions and Khuzestan province, that in some days temperature reaches above 120 F.

Water ‎outages in Khuzestan have been caused by drying rivers which in turn caused by illogical and non-‎regulated construction of dams without any environmental impact study was done! The agricultural ‎products of farmers and their livestock are all being lost, and this caused anger, protest, and uprising of ‎people, first in the cities of Khuzestan and then in other provinces in support of the people of ‎Khuzestan. ‎ These protests frightened the regime, and because it could not solve the people’s problems due to the ‎prevailing corruption in the regime apparatus, it tried to stifle the demonstrators by suppressing them.

‎ Ebrahim Raisi, who is well aware of Iran’s conditions, tried to gain the support of dissatisfied people by ‎making empty promises in his election speeches. Such as that he will create one million housing units per ‎year for people with lower income, or that he will create one million new jobs per year, and that he will ‎reduce the inflation to single digits within a year. Promises that no one believes.

Because Iran is currently ‎facing a budget deficit of $ 107 billion, and since it is not possible to raise this money with the ‎imposition of the US sanctions, he will have to print unsupported banknotes, which means another series ‎of inflation, skyrocketing prices, poverty, and misery for ordinary people. ‎ Also at the international level, the regime is looking up at North Korea as a paradigm and has put all its ‎efforts into acquiring nuclear weapons for its survival. Khamenei has not given up its covert or overt ‎activities to achieve this goal and is therefore still under extensive US sanctions. ‎ Iran’s relations with other countries are at a minimum too due to the interference in the affairs of other ‎countries and its support for proxy armed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, and so on. ‎ All these factors have made the majority of Iranians want to overthrow and change the regime of the ‎Islamic Republic with a democratic system based on the separation of religion and state, and the spread ‎of protests and uprisings show that with each passing day, despite all repressions, they are getting closer ‎to this goal. Many experts believe Raisi will not see the end of his four-year term. ‎

Cyrus Yaqubi is a Research Analyst and Iranian Foreign Affairs Commentator investigating the social ‎issues and economy of the Middle East countries in general and Iran in particular.‎

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