Iran's latest election will be remembered as the time the Islamist Republic stopped pretending it was a democracy. No wonder it recorded the lowest voter turnout in its history – less than 50% of Iranians bothered to show up at the polling stations.
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The undemocratic system that made sure Ebrahim Raisi became president begins with the Guardian Council, which is responsible for screening presidential candidates and approving or vetoing laws passed in the Iranian parliament.
Out of 592 such candidates, it only approved seven, disqualifying many prominent figures, among them former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, current Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri, and former Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani.
Most young Iranians had never heard of Raisi up until four years ago. However, the older generation remembers that in the 1980s, he was a member of the so-called "Death committee," which sentenced thousands of political prisoners to death. He has since served in several positions in the judicial system, most recently as Chief of Justice.
It seems that Raisi has been chosen by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to one day replace him, just as Khamenei was selected by his predecessor Ruhollah Khomeini to follow in his footsteps.
After Khomeini's death, then-President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani sought to strengthen his position. Before he died in 2017, he said on his deathbed that Khomeini had told him that the two roles of president and prime minister should be merged into one – to which Rafsanjani was happy to oblige – and that the most deserving person to replace him was Khamenei, who was not even an ayatollah at the time.
Rafsanjani supported the appointment of Khamenei as supreme leader, for he was an inexperienced politician, who lacked skills and charisma, and was, therefore, easy to control. Khamenei himself referred to being unfit for the role in his famous speech that began with the words: "First of all, we should shed tears of blood wailing for the Islamic society that has been forced to even propose me [as supreme leader]."
Rafsanjani forgot that he had been a leader his whole life and a president for two terms and actually created a monster. It seems that Raisi's victory stems from similar considerations. Iran has not learned.
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