Ebrahim Raisi has won a solid victory in the Iranian presidential election. Iran’s Interior Ministry said on Saturday that Raisi had won 62 percent of the votes cast.
Ebrahim Raisi is most closely associated with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the most powerful leader in Iran. Raisi is currently the Chief Justice of Iran.
As many as 2.89 crores out of 5.9 crore voters cast their ballots as many abstained from voting, including calls for a boycott of the elections.
Among the polled votes, Ebrahim Raisi got 1.79 crore votes. Former Revolutionary Guard commander Mohsen Rezaei, who competed with Raisi, received 34 lakh votes, while Abdul Nazar Hemmati received 24 lakh votes. Another candidate got 10 lakh votes.
Official results have not yet been revealed as Raisi finalizes the victory. Raisi won a landslide victory after a panel headed by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected the presidential candidacy, who he thought could be his strongest competitor.
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Ebrahim Raisi, 60, had previously contested for the presidential election but lost to incumbent President Hassan Rouhani. Raisi, who won the latest election, will take over the presidency in August.
In 1980, when Raisi was 20, he initially gained fame as Prosecutor General of Karaj. From 2004 to 2014, he served as Tehran Prosecutor and First Deputy Head of Judiciary, after whom he served as Iran’s Prosecutor General from 2014 to 2016.
Ebrahim Raisi was named head of the judiciary in 2019, which raised concerns because of his involvement in the mass executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, after the Iran-Iraq war.
Raisi is also linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Paramilitary Group (IRGC), which was named as a terrorist organization by the United States in 2019. Qassem Soleimani, former head of the IRGC Quds Force, was killed in an aviation attack by the USA last year.
Saturday, the United States announced that it regretted that Iranians could not take part in the country’s presidential “free and fair election.”
In the first reaction from Washington to ultraconservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi’s election win, a State Department spokesperson said, “Iranians were denied their right to choose their own leaders in a free and fair electoral process.”
Nevertheless, the United States will continue indirect discussions with Iran over the United States re-joining the nuclear agreement of 2015, which Donald Trump abandoned.
Many countries, including Russia and India, have extended their congratulations for Ebrahim Raisi’s land sliding win.