Episode 8: Raisi’s Victory – Where to Now For Iran?
Ebrahim Raisi was announced as the winner of the 2021 Iranian Presidential Election within 12 hours of polls closing, in what many commentators saw as an engineered victory. But Raisi’s successful election was not always a done deal, and the Chief Justice was not always the leadership’s preferred choice to succeed Hassan Rouhani. In this episode, Dr James Barry summarises the election campaign, looking at how the assassination of Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 caused a crisis for the government, and the ways in which Raisi’s rivals were removed in the lead-up to the election over the past two months. In the second half, Dr Barry is joined on the panel by Dr Ali Mozaffari to discuss what sort of leader Raisi will be, what the participation rate tells us about public attitudes to voting in Iran, and what this election means in a larger political and historical context.