Newark, Delaware (Special to Informed Comment) – In the words of the great poet Hafez, “Be happy that the tyrant did not make his way home”
While all eyes were on Gaza and the genocide taking place, an event in the mountains of Iranian Azerbaijan changed the news.
The death of President Ebrahim Raisi and his entourage, including the foreign minister Abdolahian, after a helicopter crash in the mountainous region of northern Iran will leave no vacuum. At least that is what most analysts say. In fact, as long as Khamenei is alive, no real changes will take place.
As all things indicate, there will be some mourning by a segment of the population and then life goes on and business as usual.
Raisi was just a puppet as his deputy who will be an interim president is the man behind the scenes having enormous economic leverage and close to the supreme leader’s confines.
Raisi was 63 when he died.
Raisi was fifteen when the Iranian Revolution happened. He soon joined the ranks of the Islamic revolutionaries and rose up in status and found an opportunity to become a prosecutor at the age of 20. He was not alone in this rapid accession to power.
The infamous Death Commission was comprised of all young men, some clergy and some not. They oversaw the execution of some 4000 political prisoners, some of whom whose sentences had finished, waiting to be released. Their families, waiting for their beloved, only got a bag of their belongings instead of welcoming them.
Iraj Mesdaghi, who was one of the former pollical prisoners, released later, has written extensively about those days, the cruelty of the guards and the role of Raisi. He recounts: “There was a young man who was from Karaj, Raisi knew him from his days as the prosecutor in that city; his name was Kaveh Nesari. He had been hit hard on the head and didn’t even know why he had been arrested. As a result, he had epilepsy and could barely walk. He was condemned to death. Another prisoner lifted him up and carried him to the gallows, all under the watchful eyes of Ebrahim Raisi.”
Young men became members of the Basij militia and Revolutionary Guards paramilitary at the beginning of the Revolution. They represented perhaps a segment of society who were uneducated and deeply religious. What Raisi represented was exactly the ones who were marginalized during the Pahlavi era. They did not belong to the intellectual elite who had very little connection to the masses of people in the rural areas.
In many ways, we can compare them to a large portion of Trump supporters.
Raisi and his ilk came to power when nationalists and leftists and all others were undermined. The taste of power and greed for money overwhelmed them to the extent that holding on to it meant the oppression of others. Oppression of women under Raisi became even worse. The gasht ershad or the morality police, which had been non-existent during Rouhani came into full force, thus resulting in the incident that took the life of Mahsa.
When Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman was taken, beaten, interrogated harshly, and went into a coma and died a few days later, all Iranians and the world reacted. She was not the only one. Dozens of women, young and old were taken into custody, raped and murdered. The feminist movement, Zan, Zendegi, Azadi came into being. The world responded. Eiffel tower was lit with the slogan. Women, Life, Freedom.
I remember visiting Iran in 2017 and 2019. I saw many young women with little hejab or not at all. No one said anything and no one did anything. Things changed with Raisi’s presidency.
The men of the Islamic Republic have used every measure to silence women. Sometimes women of their own league are also involved. This was the case with Mahsa; her interrogator was a lumpen accompanied by his female interrogators.
The harsh measures taken during Raisi’s term, even with his populist image (going to villages and spreading “good-will”)
Included more suppression, more executions, more torture, and more strangulation of the Iranian society.
The economy under Raisi sank. It was not just the sanctions but mismanagement and corruption.
Whether anything new will happen, it is hard to tell. Iran is always unpredictable.
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