Page 10 - MEOG Week 32 2021

MEOG POLICY MEOG
Hardline cleric Raisi sworn in as Iran’s president
IRAN
HARDLINE cleric Ebrahim Raisi was on August 5 sworn in before parliament as Iran’s new pres- ident, succeeding relative moderate Hassan Rouhani.
There were some signs that Raisi will move to complete negotiations for a relaunch of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as he seeks to give Iranians an economic boost amid Iran’s battered economy.
“The sanctions must be lifted. We will sup- port any diplomatic plan that supports this goal,” Raisi said in his inauguration speech, referring to the swingeing sanctions introduced against Tehran by former US president Donald Trump when he unilaterally pulled Washington out of the nuclear accord in spring 2018.
Rouhani clearly grew frustrated that during his final weeks as president, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would not allow his team to complete the indirect Vienna talks with the US—and direct talks with five other major powers—aimed at finding a way to resurrect the JCPOA.
That task has instead been handed to Raisi. There are anxieties that he will make additional demands in the talks that could prove unpalata- ble to US President Joe Biden’s negotiators, but Western diplomats will at least be encouraged that he has signalled an unmistakable willing- ness to talk—EU diplomat and nuclear deal negotiator Enrique Mora was scheduled to be among representatives from the bloc attending the Raisi inauguration.
Ex-judiciary chief Raisi, 60, begins his
four-term as president in something of a tight corner. The Iranian economy is struggling to emerge from a bitter three-year recession caused by the Trump sanctions and, given how the une- lected Khamenei—who as head of the regime has the final say on all matters of state—agreed to the barring of all the top moderate candidates in the June presidential election, thus giving Raisi an almost unopposed path to victory, the new president is very unpopular with many millions of Iranians.
Prolonged social unrest that broke out in the southwest of the drought-ridden country in July in response to water shortages, a coronavirus epidemic that officials say has entered its fifth wave, industrial action for better pay and con- ditions that has been taking place in the energy industry for many weeks, protests over low pen- sions, an Iranian rial that remains on its knees, high unemployment and soaring inflation, not to mention a sabre-rattling Israel that on August 5 called for military action against Iran follow- ing attacks on shipping in the region—for which Tehran denied responsibility—are other matters that will be in his first presidential in-tray.
Raisi also faces the prospect of opponents and campaign groups redoubling efforts to dig up more evidence of how he was in 1988 involved in the executions of thousands of political pris- oners, many of whom were leftist Iranian oppo- nents who backed Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War.
He was one of four judges who sat on secret tribunals that came to be known as the “Death Committee”, which condemned the prisoners to
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 32 11•August•2021