The Islamic Republic of Iran announced on Monday that its President, Ebrahim Raisi, had been killed in a helicopter crash.
We observe that there was a certain Biblical justice in Raisi’s death as it coincided with the scheduled judicial murder of Arvin Nethaniel Ghahremani, a young Iranian Jew set to be executed on Monday for defending himself after being attacked by a Muslim man.*
Unfortunately, Raisi can only die once, so one must look to divine justice for his many other crimes against humanity, including the killing and torture of thousands of his fellow Iranians.
Raisi earned the sobriquet "Butcher of Tehran" for his brutal crackdowns on Iranian demonstrators, including people who participated in the 2022 "Women, Life, Freedom" movement to secure justice for the regime’s murder of the young Iranian Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini.
Indeed, the Trump administration sanctioned Raisi for his role in carrying out the massacre of 5,000 Iranian political prisoners in 1988 and for his role in the clerical regime’s slaughter of 1,500 Iranian demonstrators in 2019.
And FOX News reported Raisi boasted about his role on a death panel in the late 1980s, when he served as a judge who issued summary execution sentences to dissidents. Raisi termed the mass murders as "one of the proud achievements" of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Alireza Nader, a Washington, D.C. expert on Iran’s regime, told Fox News Digital that "Raisi was one of the most evil men serving one of the most brutal regimes in existence today. The people of Iran will never forget his crimes. His death will present major challenges for the succession to Khamenei."
Our friend Benjamin Weinthal, writing for FOX News, observed Raisi’s tenure was marked by three defining features: his expansion of Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program; the missile and drone attack on Israel; and his bloody purge of activists associated with the "Women, Life, Freedom" movement.
Raisi was a leading figure in the Islamic Republic’s playing of the Obama and Biden administrations. His efforts led to billions of dollars in sanctions relief and frozen assets being released.
Mr. Weinthal reported that when the Biden administration said the sanctions' relief cannot be used to finance Iran’s growing military, nuclear and drone industries, Raisi fired back at the U.S. last year, saying that the money will be used "wherever we need it."
Raisi was one of the hardest of the hardliners in Tehran, a true believer in the Iranian revolution observed Jawad Iqbal in an article for The Spectator.
Mr. Iqbal claims the thornier issue is Raisi’s closeness to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Raisi was widely tipped to be Khamenei’s successor. His death clears the way for Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, to succeed to the top job. This may not go down too well with others in the regime: many clerics oppose the idea of a hereditary succession as going against the country’s revolutionary principles. Any such disruption and in-fighting over the eventual succession to the post of supreme leader will prove massively destabilizing in a country that is already buckling under economic and political strain.
More importantly, there is absolutely no indication that any potential successor to Raisi qualifies as a “moderate” or pro-western. The bottom line is that Raisi’s death is cause for celebration but is unlikely to result in any change in Iran’s anti-American, anti-Israel foreign policy, or cause it to deviate from its commitment to spreading its version of Shia Islam through terror and subversion.
*Media reports indicate Ghahremani has been given a one month reprieve from his death sentence.
Iran president Ebrahim Raisi
Butcher of Tehran
Helicopter crash
Arvin Nethaniel Ghahremani execution
Iranian demonstrators
Trump administration
Iranian political prisoners
death panel judge
Iran nuclear weapons program
Obama Iran Deal
Iran drones
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Mojtaba Raisi