President Ebrahim Raisi: 6 Facts You Should Know

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash on May 19 plunged Iran into five days of official mourning and saw First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber assume interim leadership in the Islamic Republic.

Praise for Raisi has poured in from across the globe. Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro wrote that he and his wife Cilia are “overwhelmed by great sadness at having to bid farewell to an exemplary person, an extraordinary world leader.” China’s President Xi Jingping called Raisi “a good friend.” Russian President Vladimir Putin praised Raisi’s “invaluable personal contribution to growing friendly relations between our countries.” Other nations, including France, the United States, and the European Union, also sent official condolences.

Yet Raisi - and his successor President Mokber - can hardly be described as bastions of stability. They are part of an aggressive Iranian attempt to foment violence across the Middle East, develop nuclear weapons, and wipe Israel off the map. Here are six Jewish facts about President Raisi and his successor.

Butcher of Tehran

Raisi was a young 18-year-old theology student during Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. He quickly joined the revolution, becoming a judge and dispensing justice to political dissidents. Those who knew him then describe Raisi as cruel; he seemed to enjoy handing down harsh sentences to those who opposed Iran’s new leaders.

Rising through the revolutionary ranks, Raisi became a judge in larger towns; by the time he was 24 he was a judge in Iran’s capital Tehran, able to weigh in on thousands and thousands of political cases. In 1988 he was a key part of a “Death Committee” set up by religious leader Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini to torture and kill the mostly teenage members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq, a dissident group. Raisi took part in overseeing their tortures and personally witnessed up to 5,000 dissidents be put to death, earning the moniker “The Butcher of Tehran.”

Even though Raisi later declared that he was “proud of being a defender of human rights and of people’s security and comfort as a prosecutor,” political prisoners didn’t see it that way. Iraj Mesdaghi, one of the few political prisoners from that period to survive, recalls seeing Raisi visiting the prison where he was held to watch executions. At the time, Raisi wore ordinary clothes; later he began wearing floor-length robes and a black turban, reserved only for Muslims who claim they can trace their family history directly back to the Muslim prophet Mohammed. As time went by, Raisi cloaked his cruelty more and more in the trappings of religion.

Denying the Holocaust

Holocaust denial is a major preoccupation of Iran’s regime. The country held a major conference meant to disprove the Holocaust in 2006; Iranian Foreign Minister Manechehr Mottaki - who also died in the helicopter crash along with Raisi - played a major role in that conference, explaining that Iran could neither confirm nor deny that the Holocaust took place.

Raisi also sought to sow doubts that the Holocaust ever occurred. Appearing on CBS’s 60 Minutes during a 2022 visit to the United States, he said there “are some signs that it happened” and that “if so, they should allow it to be investigated and researched.” Raisi garnered criticism for these outrageous remarks, but he’d already accomplished what he set out to do: introducing the thought that perhaps the entire Holocaust is a hoax to millions of viewers around the world.

Wiping Israel Off the Map

Raisi was outspoken in his hatred for Israel. He refused to call Israel by name, referring to it instead as the “Zionist regime” or the “illegitimate regime.” Iran maintains no diplomatic relations with Israel; Raisi declared “if a state shakes hands with the Zionist regime, then they are an accomplice to their crimes.”

He made no secret of his desire the see the end of Israel, claiming that “the only solution (to the Arab-Israeli conflict) is a Palestinian state from the river to the sea” (that is, in all the territory currently occupied by Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza). He threatened to destroy Israeli cities including Haifa and Tel Aviv.

Raisi inherited a robust nuclear weapons program when he became President of Iran in 2021. He sped up Iran’s nuclear timetable, racing to enrich enough uranium to build an arsenal of nuclear weapons. The Economist estimates that after three years in power, Raisi had enabled Iran to build seven nuclear bombs with just a few weeks' notice.

Financing Terrorists

In 2019, the US Government imposed sanctions on Raisi because of his support for terrorism and other offenses. Current President Mohammad Mokhber was sanctioned by the US in 2021.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland recently presented evidence that Iran under President Raisi directly funded and helped coordinate some of the most fearsome terrorist organizations on the planet, including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hamas, Hezbollah, Shia militias in Iraq, and the Houthi terrorist group which controls much of Yemen. (The Houthi slogan, supported by Iran, is “Death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews.) “Iran utilizes the proceeds of its black-market oil sales to fund its criminal activities,” Attorney General Garland reported, “including its support of the IRGC, Hamas, Hizballah, and other Iranian aligned terrorist groups.” .

Raisi was in close contact with Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist leaders. It’s unclear whether he knew the exact date of Hamas’ brutal terror attack of October 7, 2023, but he surely knew that the terrorist group he enthusiastically supported was planning a major offensive. Raisi was also proud of his investment in Hezbollah, the quasi-governmental army that controls much of Lebanon. Hezbollah has an arsenal of over 150,000 sophisticated rockets; since October 7, 2023, it has fired over 3,000 rockets into Israel.

Building an “Axis of Resistance”

One of Raisi’s lasting legacies is creating close relations between Iran and Russia and China, a new alliance sometimes dubbed the “Axis of Resistance” to Western interests.

Russia’s new closeness with Iran helps give Iran greater legitimacy on the world stage and new markets for its oil. In January 2022, Raisi visited Russian President Vladimir Putin; when Putin invaded Ukraine a month later, Iran exported advanced drone weaponry to Russia, which it has deployed against Ukrainian troops.

Even more important to Iran was the close relationship Raisi helped forge with China. A recent US Government report notes that Iran is now exporting record amounts of oil, its primary export, with “almost all” being sold to China. In early 2024, Iran was exporting nearly 2 million barrels of oil to China a day, enabling Iran to effectively circumvent Western sanctions.

Killing Hundreds of Iranian Protestors

In September 2022, Iranian police arrested a young Kurdish woman named Mahsa Amini in Tehran for showing some of her hair beneath her hijab. Amini was later murdered in prison. Her killing galvanized Iran. Women began to remove their head scarves - which are mandated under Iranian law - and go bare headed.

Raisi ordered a brutal crackdown. Modesty police have arrested thousands of women and men who protested Iran’s draconian dress code. Over 500 protestors have died in custody. Rather than backing down, Raisi celebrated his iron rule of Islamic law. At the time of his death, he was being considered as a possible successor to Iran’s supreme religious leader, Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khomeni.

Ebrahim Raisi is mourned throughout much of Iran and around the world. But with reports of fireworks going off in Tehran, many of his victims are celebrating his passing and the end of his brutal, murderous leadership.