Congratulations poured in for ultraconservative Ebrahim Raisi on Saturday on winning Iran's presidential election as his rivals conceded even before official results were announced.
The other three candidates in the race congratulated him for his victory, which had been widely expected after a host of heavyweight rivals had been barred from running.
“I congratulate the people on their choice,” said outgoing moderate President Hassan Rouhani without naming Raisi. “My official congratulations will come later, but we know who got enough votes in this election and who is elected today by the people.”
The other two ultraconservative candidates — Mohsen Rezai and Amirhossein Qazizadeh Hashemi — explicitly congratulated Raisi, as did the only reformist in the race, former central bank governor Abdolnasser Hemmati.
Raisi, 60, takes over from Rouhani in August as Iran seeks to salvage its tattered nuclear deal with major powers and free itself from punishing US sanctions that have driven a sharp economic downturn.
Raisi, the head of the judiciary whose black turban signifies direct descent from Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), is seen as close to the 81-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has ultimate political power in Iran.
Friday's voting was extended by two hours past the original midnight deadline amid fears of a low turnout of 50 per cent or less.
The ballots were counted overnight and authorities were yet to release the official result or turnout figures.
Many voters chose to stay away after the field of some 600 hopefuls, including 40 women, had been winnowed down to seven candidates, all men, excluding an ex-president and a former parliament speaker
Three of the vetted candidates dropped out of the race two days before Friday's election and two of them quickly threw their support behind Raisi.
Populist former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, one of those who were barred from running by the Guardian Council of clerics and jurists, said he would not vote, declaring in a video message that “I do not want to have a part in this sin.”
'Save the people
On election day, pictures of often flag-waving voters dominated state TV coverage, but away from the polling stations some voiced anger at what they saw as a stage-managed election aiming to cement ultraconservative control.
“Whether I vote or not, someone has already been elected,” scoffed Tehran shopkeeper Saeed Zareie. “They organise the elections for the media.”
Enthusiasm was dampened further by spiralling inflation and job losses and the pandemic that proved more deadly in Iran than anywhere else in the region, killing more than 80,000 people by the official count.
Among those who queued to vote at schools, mosques and community centres, many said they supported Raisi, who has promised to fight corruption, help the poor and build millions of flats for low-income families.
A nurse named Sahebiyan said she backed him for his anti-graft credentials and on hopes he would “move the country forward [...] and save the people from economic, cultural and social deprivation”.
Raisi, who holds deeply conservative views on many social issues including the role of women in public life, has been named in Iranian media as a possible successor to Khamenei.
To opposition and human rights groups, his name is linked to the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988. The US government has sanctioned him over the purge, in which Raisi has denied playing a part.
'Maximum pressure'
Ultimate power in Iran, since its 1979 revolution toppled the US-backed monarchy, rests with the supreme leader, but the president wields major influence in areas from industrial policy to foreign affairs.
Rouhani, 72, leaves office in August after serving the maximum two consecutive four-year terms allowed under the constitution.
His landmark achievement was the 2015 deal with world powers under which Iran agreed to limit its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.
But high hopes for greater prosperity were crushed in 2018 when then US president Donald Trump withdrew from the accord and launched a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.
While Iran has always denied seeking a nuclear weapon, Trump charged it was still planning to build the bomb and destabilising the Middle East through proxy groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
As old and new US sanctions hit Iran, trade dried up and foreign companies bolted. The economy nosedived and spiralling prices fuelled repeated bouts of social unrest which were put down by security forces.
Iran's ultraconservative camp — which deeply distrusts the US, labelled the “Great Satan” or the “Global Arrogance” in the Islamic republic — attacked Rouhani over the failing deal.
Despite this, there is broad agreement among Iran's senior political figures, including Raisi, that the country must seek an end to the US sanctions in ongoing talks in Vienna aimed at rescuing the nuclear accord.
When the polls open on Friday for Iran’s presidential election, four men will be on the ballot, but one enjoys a significant lead over the others.Observers predict Iran’s eighth president will be elected with very low turnout amid public disillusionment and widespread disqualification of reformist and pragmatic candidates by the Guardian Council, a 12-member constitutional vetting body.
On Wednesday, hardliner former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, lawmaker Alireza Zakani and reformist former vice president Mohsen Mehralizadeh withdrew their candidacies, leaving four men in the race.Here is what you need to know about the men allowed to run in the impactful race for a presidency that could influence how Iran will tackle its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, United States sanctions and an ailing economy defined by rampant inflation.
Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s current chief justice, is by far the frontrunner. He enjoys wide backing from conservative and hardline politicians and factions and has topped polls by a large margin. Like Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Raisi wears a black turban, indicating he is a sayyid – a descendant of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.
The 60-year-old cleric is also seen as the most likely candidate to replace the 82-year-old Khamenei when he passes away, a point raised by an opponent in the televised presidential debates as something that may make him abandon the presidency if he wins it.
Raisi grew up in the northeastern city of Mashhad, an important religious centre for Shia Muslims where Imam Reza, the eighth Shia imam, is buried. He attended the seminary in Qom and studied under some of Iran’s most prominent clerics. His education was a point of contention in the debates, where he said he holds a doctorate in law and denied having only six grades of formal education.
After the 1979 Islamic revolution, a young Raisi joined the prosecutor’s office in Masjed Soleyman in southwestern Iran, and later became the prosecutor for several jurisdictions. He moved to the capital, Tehran, in 1985 after being appointed deputy prosecutor.
He is purported to have played a role in the mass execution of political prisoners that took place in 1988, shortly after the eight-year Iran-Iraq War ended. He never publicly addressed the claims. Over the next three decades, he served as Tehran’s prosecutor, head of the General Inspection Organization, prosecutor general of the Special Court of the Clergy, and a deputy chief justice.
The supreme leader appointed Raisi head of the Astan-e Quds Razavi, the influential shrine of Imam Reza, in March 2016. Leading one of Iran’s largest bonyads, or charitable trusts, gave Raisi control of assets worth billions of dollars and cemented his position among the clerical and business elite in Mashhad.
Raisi ran unsuccessfully against outgoing President Hassan Rouhani in the 2017 presidential election, garnering 38 percent of the vote, or just under 16 million votes. Khamenei appointed Raisi to head the judiciary in 2019, and he has tried to strengthen his position as a champion of fighting corruption by targeting insiders and holding public trials, while effectively beginning his presidential campaign early by travelling to nearly all of Iran’s 32 provinces. Raisi has branded himself a “rival to corruption, inefficiency and aristocracy” and has said he will uphold the nuclear deal as a state agreement, but believes a “strong” government is needed to steer it in the right direction.
Abdolnaser Hemmati, An unlikely candidate, moderate has tried to portray himself as a realist. He became the governor of the Central Bank of Iran in 2018 during a tumultuous time, shortly after US President Donald Trump reneged on the nuclear deal and started imposing harsh sanctions that eventually engulfed the entire Iranian economy.
The 64-year-old was dismissed from his post by Rouhani earlier this month for running for president, but his opponents have tried to portray him as one of the figures behind the current dire economic situation.