Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash on May 19, was an insubstantial man in an insignificant job.
Absolute power in Iran rests not with the president but with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the pretorian force that controls, indeed embodies, the Islamic regime’s repressive apparatus. The IRGC is also an economic juggernaut that controls the commanding heights of the country’s economy.
Aside from being inept, Raisi was notorious for his role in the summary executions of more than 4,000 political prisoners in 1988. A few years ago, when there was some open discussion of this infamous episode in Iran, Raisi had the temerity to suggest that he deserved a human-rights award for cleansing the world of the corrupting influence of those he condemned to die. And a prominent speaker at Raisi’s funeral “promised” that his murderous “work of the 1980s” will continue unabated.