Iran’s New President Poses a Challenge to the West

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton NB] Times & Transcript

The sham June 18 Iranian presidential election, where the candidates had to be vetted as ideologically correct by the country’s real rulers, the Shia theocracy, resulted in the victory of hardliner Ebrahim Raisi, himself a cleric. No surprise. 

Power lies not with the president, but in the office of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He controls the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the media channels, the clerics and foreign policy. 

Some 600 hopefuls, including 40 women, had been winnowed down to seven candidates, all men. Many Iranians saw this latest election as having been engineered for Raisi to win and shunned the poll.  

Official figures showed voter turnout was the lowest ever for a presidential election, at 48.8 per cent, compared to more than 70 per cent for the previous vote in 2017. For what it’s worth, Raisi won almost 62 per cent of the votes. 

Raisi, who in 2017 lost to more moderate Hassan Rouhani, was the preferred candidate of Ayatollah Khamenei, who in March 2019 had appointed him as head of Iran’s judiciary, where he launched a “war on corruption.” He has even been seen as a possible successor to Khamenei. 

Raisi was already notorious for his role in the mass execution of thousands of prisoners in the late 1980s. He is said to have been one of four judges who oversaw secret death sentences for about 5,000 prisoners in jails near Tehran, according to Amnesty International. It says the location of the mass graves where the men and women were buried is being systematically concealed by the Iranian authorities.   

In 2009, he defended the executions of a dozen people who took part in the protests that followed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection.  

Under his presidency, Iran will seek to reinforce a puritanical system of Islamic government, possibly meaning more controls on social activities, fewer freedoms and jobs for women, and tighter control of social media and the press. 

The regime will also, according to analysts, look to China to help the economy out of its deep crisis. Raisi will zealously stamp out nationwide uprisings, and those remain a possibility after the 2019-2020 fuel price protests. 

Will Iran continue to develop a nuclear arsenal, something it denies but which most observers think is progressing?  

Iran on June 15 announced that it has produced 6.5 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 per cent purity and 108 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20 per cnt purity in five months.  

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi contended May 24 that Iran was enriching uranium at purity levels that “only countries making bombs are reaching.” He stated that it was Iran's “sovereign right” to develop its program but added: “This is a degree that requires a vigilant eye.” 

A three-month monitoring deal between Iran and the IAEA has expired, so the agency no longer has access to Iran’s nuclear data. 

U.S. President Joe Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will be uncomfortable with Raisi as president. Indirect talks with Iran over reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal that was abrogated by Donald Trump, may face more uncertainty.  

Yet Biden seems unwilling to threaten Tehran with more sanctions and military action even as Iran keeps enriching uranium and developing more advanced centrifuges. His administration may have to admit that Tehran under Raisi has no intention of making any nuclear deal “longer, stronger, broader” as Blinken once described a follow-up agreement to the JCPOA, without sanctions relief. 

Israel is the country most likely to derail the administration’s hopes. Its opposition to the nuclear deal is much deeper and broader today than it was in 2015. Israel continues to conduct covert actions inside Iran, such as its sabotage of a power generator at the Iranian nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz in April. 

Many Sunni Arab states also fear Iran’s imperialism via proxy militias in Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen and see America as a declining power. 

However, major Israeli military action against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would surely cause a rift between the Jewish state and the Democratic Party, and with Benjamin Netanyahu no longer prime minister, this may be less likely.