Hardline cleric Ebrahim Raisi was sworn in as Iran’s president on Thursday before invitees from 70 countries, as the Islamic Republic’s clerical rulers face growing crises at home and abroad.
The parliamentary ceremony followed Tuesday’s ceremony in which the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei formally tapped Raisi as president in a ceremony attended mostly by domestic officials.
While Tuesday’s ceremony seems to have marked Raisi’s formal ascent to power, Thursday’s seems to have been directed at introducing him to the world.
Ahead of Thursday’s ceremony, Iran advertised that fewer domestic officials would be present to make room for the foreign dignitaries and because of coronavirus distancing restrictions.
Khamenei and Raisi made several internal religious references on Tuesday that may have been less prominent in Thursday’s ceremony because of the international attendees.
Raisi first vowed to take steps to lift “the tyrannical sanctions” imposed by the US but it is unclear whether he will utter a more conciliatory tone in front of leaders from abroad or whether he will push on with his confrontational approach to the West.
On Monday, Iranian Parliament spokesman Seyyed Nezam Al-Din Mousavi announced that 115 officials from 73 countries would attend on Thursday. Many of them had already arrived on Thursday morning.
The “inauguration ceremony will be attended by 10 presidents, 20 speakers of parliament, 11 foreign ministers, 10 other ministers, envoys of presidents, vice presidents, and parliamentary delegations,” Mousavi said earlier.
He added that the heads and officials of 11 international and regional organizations, the representative of the UN secretary-general and the president of OPEC, as well as officials from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), the European Union, Eurasian Economic Union, Parliamentary Union of the OIC Member States, Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) and the D-8 Organization for Economic Cooperation would also be in attendance.
Israel has slammed the EU for sending a representative to the ceremony that is taking place less than a week after a British and a Romanian national were killed in a drone strike on an Israel-operated oil tanker in the Arabian Sea that has been blamed on Tehran.
Some countries have imposed sanctions or criminal proceedings against Raisi for his role in mass executions of his own people in the 1980s.
In his speech on Tuesday, Khamenei tried to downplay the low voter turnout in the presidential election, bragging about Iran having a more successful and peaceful transfer of power than other countries. He accused foreign enemies of conspiring to keep voters away from the polling booths but tried to save face by saying that the turnout was nevertheless good enough, considering the difficult circumstances, including the pandemic.
Khamenei ignored the fact that the majority of eligible voters boycotted the election because Khamenei’s own Guardian Council disqualified all of Raisi’s main challengers.
Raisi won the June 18 election with more than 60% of the vote among those who did turn out. Among the rivals who were disqualified were two top officials, an incumbent vice–president, and a former parliamentary speaker, who were seen as having a significant chance to win.
Although outgoing president Hassan Rouhani handily defeated Raisi in 2017, his second-place finish and background as head of the country’s judiciary, as well as having a seat on the Assembly of Experts – which appoints the next Supreme Leader – positioned him well for another challenge.
The new Iranian president has thrown the nuclear negotiations for a return to the 2015 JCPOA deal off course. For most of April and May, it seemed that Iran, the US and the world powers were progressing toward an almost inevitable deal, with the only question being whether the timing would be before or after the June 18 presidential election. Raisi even expressed grudging support for a return to the deal before he was confirmed in the election.
But since he won, all the messages coming from Iran, especially from Khamenei, have put forward a much harder line, seeking concessions from the US which would bar it from snapping back sanctions in the future, and essentially cutting off any attempt to make the deal “longer and stronger,” as Washington has vowed to do.
IN RECENT days, the Iranian media have also focused on Raisi’s religious credentials, building him up as a potential successor to the 82-year-old Khamenei, who has had significant health issues in recent years.
“Representatives and prominent figures of different religions and sects of the world were also invited and important cultural and social figures of the Islamic world will also be present and these figures will arrive in Tehran in the coming days,” Mousavi told Iranian media.
Iran is a theocracy run by ayatollahs so for Raisi to inherit the supreme leader role from Khamenei, he would have to gain more clout as a religious expert. The Iranian website Mehr did an extended feature on Raisi on June 30 proposing greater cooperation between the Abrahamic faiths and citing his religious credentials, saying that he would be a powerful proponent for such an issue in his new presidential role.
At the same time, some of the religious prominence attributed to him can be a smokescreen, since Khamenei himself achieved the role of supreme leader despite several major religious figures who competed against him being regarded as much greater experts in religion.
Even the Mehr article about cooperating with Abrahamic faiths appeared to be mostly based on a meeting between Raisi and a Vatican official on July 21, with a Raisi spokesman tying it to an attempt to influence a split between the Vatican and other Western powers.
According to the Mehr article, Raisi’s proposal seemed mostly aimed at getting the Vatican to support Iran’s narratives against Israel, the Saudis, Sunnis in Yemen, and Christian-American Evangelists over battles Tehran has fomented in the region.