Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi will take his oath today following his election victory in June.
Ebrahim Raisi succeeds Hassan Rouhani, whose landmark success during his two-term presidency was the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers.
According to the details, Raisi won office in a June 18 election marked by record abstention after many heavyweights were banned from standing.
Iran currently has been suffering from its worst drought in more than 50 years. Water is scarce, power outages are frequent and the coronavirus continues to spread rapidly.
Meanwhile, Inflation has risen up due to the pressure of US sanctions. Many Iranians feel exhausted.
Protests against the government continue to flare up in various parts of Iran, most recently in Khuzestan province in the southwest.
There is not much hope that things will change for the better under the new presidency.
Who Is Ebrahim Raisi?
Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline cleric close to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has won Iran’s presidential election in June.
He was born in 1960 in Mashhad, Iran’s second-biggest city. His father, who was a cleric, died when he was five years old.
Mr Raisi, who wears a black turban identifying him in Shia tradition as a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, followed his father’s footsteps and started attending a seminary in the holy city of Qom at the age of 15.
On the other hand, Mr Raisi has been heavily criticized for his human rights record. Campaign groups have blamed him of involvement in the executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.
He was one of four judges who sat on secret tribunals that came to be known as the “Death Committee” which condemned the prisoners to death.
Raisi has said the sentences were justified because then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had issued a religious ruling.
The US imposed sanctions on Ebrahim Raisi in 2019 for alleged human rights abuses.
