Millions of Iranians took to the streets to mourn the deaths of their elected President Ebrahim Raisi and a number of other senior officials, after a helicopter crash in the East Azerbaijan province. Despite the large public display of grieving, there is an attempt throughout Western media to portray President Raisi as a reviled figure inside of Iran and as the “butcher of Tehran”, with calls even coming to attack Iran now while it is allegedly weak.
Following the shocking helicopter crash in the Varzaqan County area of Iran’s East Azerbaijan Province, leading to the deaths of the nation’s President, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and other leading government officials, a whole range of allegations began to fly and the reactions were mixed on social media. A lot of the allegations are born of a complete lack of knowledge in the Western World about Iran itself and also Iranian politics in general, which is why the issue has to be broken down piece by piece.
“The Butcher Of Tehran” or “A Man Of The People”?
In order to be properly depicted, we have to understand who the Iranian President actually was through the correct context and a breakdown of the the propaganda surrounding his person.
Ebrahim Raisi was born in the Iranian city of Mashhad, which is a key religious location in the country as it is home to the Imam Reza shrine. From the age of 15 he was educated at the renowned Qom religious seminary and went on to study under several important Islamic scholars of the time. He himself was born into a clerical family and joined the protests which culminated the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
The Islamic Revolution came as a popular uprising from the Iranian people that had grown tired of the brutal tyrant known as Shah Mohammad Reva Pahlavi, or simply “The Shah”; who had been a close ally to the US government and while providing privileges to the upper echelon of Iranian society — treating the rest of his people like cattle. The Shah was installed in power by the CIA and MI6, following a coup in 1953 under Operation AJAX, against the first ever democratically elected Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh. The Shah was notorious for arresting and torturing anyone in opposition to him and even went as far as permitting US citizens to live in special gated off settlements inside Iran, which were situated next to impoverished ghettos where indigenous Iranians lived, similar to what we see in Israel today. The dictator’s close relations with the West and Israel played a large role in the revolution’s anti-US and anti-Israeli sentiments.
Today, Reza Pahlavi, the man being passed off as the “Crown Prince of Iran” by the Israeli government and mainstream media shows like Piers Morgan Uncensored, is the son of the deposed dictator. Pahlavi is welcomed with open arms by Western leaderships and media, espousing his alleged desire to transform Iran into a liberal democracy without being questioned. Yet, the elephant in the room is that this man claims he wants democracy, but also seeks to re-instate a tyrannical monarchy in which he would hypothetically be an absolute dictator. It’s either one or the other; either Iran has democracy or it has a Shah, you cannot be both pregnant and not pregnant simultaneously.
Understanding the world Ebrahim Raisi was born into is important in understanding his journey in life. He grew up in revolutionary Iran and witnessed the downfall of The Shah and would go on to receive his doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence and law at the Shahid Motahari University, paving the way to what would be a career in leadership positions. Ebrahim Raisi would quickly be promoted, at only 25 years of age, to be the Deputy Prosecutor of Tehran. It was while serving in this position that he is now accused of being one of four judges on a secret panel that sentenced thousands of prisoners to death.
Of those executed, the majority of them were belonging to the infamous Mujahideen E-Khalq (MEK) movement, which had killed around 16,000 Iranians in bombing and shooting attacks. The MEK is understandably described in Iran as a terrorist group, which also used to be the case in the United States. In recent years, leaders in the UK and US have been able to publicly support the MEK, which is currently based in Albania and operates more like a strange cult than an opposition movement. The violent group also sided with Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, during the Iran-Iraq war which resulted in the killing of up to 1 million Iranians, it should also come as no surprise that Iraq received US backing in the war.
For Raisi’s role (which he had denied) in the sentencing of these prisoners to death, he was labelled “the butcher of Tehran”. This title and the way the story is depicted, suggests that he ordered the execution of completely innocent civilians, who were as innocent as a woman who refused to wear the headscarf. Although the death penalty is indeed brutal, the context here is crucial, as there is a difference between sentencing non-violent political prisoners to death and sentencing people who are accused of carrying out bombing attacks against civilians. Without getting too deep into this case, the argument I am making here is not that there was no wrongdoing in this instance, it is simply putting forward the context in which these death sentences were issued. There are still states within the US that administer the death penalty, for instance, and even while there are many innocents who die due to it, leading to arguments for the policy to be abolished, it remains the law.
Outside of Iran, many people who make up the Iranian diaspora are in open opposition to the Islamic Republic and want it overthrown, a large portion of them argue for the return the Iranian Monarchy, while a smaller component seek the installation of the MEK. When you hear from these Iranian opposition people, they are not part of some kind of democratic movement inside of Iran and the majority of the vocal proponents of regime change are financed by Western governments, special interest groups, the Israelis, and formerly the Saudi government. Iran International for example, which is the primary news source for the Iranian opposition supporters, was one of the most vocal proponents of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement that was backed by Western governments in 2022. This movement can be described as Colonial Feminist in its nature, it argued that it was against the Hijab Law inside of Iran as its main point, which is interesting for Iran International to back, having been accused of being a Saudi government puppet outlet after it was outed by The Guardian that it is Saudi-funded. The channel rejects the claim that it is controlled by Riyadh.
It also clear that Western governments don’t actually care about the execution of political prisoners by governments in West Asia, nor do they care about the repression of Women’s Rights, this is crystal clear. If they truly cared even a little bit about women being able to remove the Hijab, they would be sanctioning Riyadh. Once we have established this point going forward, we can conclude that their issue with Iran has nothing to do with treatment of women.
In Iran itself, as shown by millions of men and women who took to the streets in order to attend funeral processions, Raisi has a rather different image. There being wide ranging support for President Raisi does not mean there are no opposing voices, there are a range of parties and many individuals who took issue with him on a range of issues. However, it is clear that many saw him as a humble man of the people who would travel frequently to the poorest areas and attempt to help them. For this reason, based upon his popularity, many speculated that he would potentially be in line to replace Iran’s Supreme Spiritual Leader, Seyyed Ali Khamenei.
Ebrahim Raisi was elected by the Iranian people in 2021 and ran on the platform of economic reform, in addition to advocating a tougher stance towards the Western powers. While his predecessor, Hassan Rouhani had attempted to mend ties with the governments of the collective West, he suffered a huge blow to his argument about how to create prosperity in Iran when the US unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement. The US Trump administration placed the harshest sanctions ever implemented against Iran which caused immense economic suffering.
In the Western media Ebrahim Raisi was labeled a “hardliner” and a “conservative”, which had to do mostly with his foreign policy approach. The term conservative in Iran is only befitting to describe the religio-social aspects of political leaders like President Raisi, as they are indeed socially and culturally conservative, maintaining more of a traditionalist stance. However, in Iran, the so-called hardliner conservatives tend to pursue more Left-leaning socialist economic policies, which is why such labels don’t really help in explaining them properly. The Islamic Revolution in Iran was in large part led by Marxist groups who maintained an Islamic-socialist doctrine, with some Communists also participating, which influenced the discourse during the revolution itself and the government that would replace the Shah.
On the foreign policy front, Ebrahim Raisi was focused on pivoting away from the approach of his predecessor who had sought to build alliances in the Western world. This meant expanding Tehran’s ties with Moscow and Beijing, joining the BRICS economic alliance and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The other key aspect to Iran’s foreign policy, under Ebrahim Raisi, was adopting a more resolute stance towards the issue of regional resistance against Israel and US hegemony. Iran, under Raisi, would focus on developing a stronger deterrence equation when it came to Tel Aviv and would green-light the first ever direct attack against Israel, in response for the Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria.
The fact that Ebrahim Raisi was a President that decided to align himself with the Global South and build relations with Iran’s natural allies to what is considered “the East”, greatly frustrated the United States. As did the fact that the maximum pressure sanctions ended up having less effect than expected, with Moscow working hand-in-hand with Tehran following their own battles with American sanctions over the war in Ukraine. Yet it was the Iranian defense strategy in West Asia that frustrated Washington the most. Not only did the Iranian President decide to focus more heavily on backing its regional allies — Hezbollah, Ansarallah, the PMU, the Syrian government, and the Palestinian armed resistance — it managed to neutralize the threat coming from one of the biggest enemies in the region, Saudi Arabia.
What has to be understood about Ebrahim Raisi, when you hear criticisms about him in the West, especially from Iranians who live in the diaspora and have been raised outside of Iran, is that there is a completely biased view that does not reflect how Iranians feel inside their country, for the most part. Yes, there is great opposition to a lot of policies coming from the leadership in Tehran, this is undoubtably true, as it is in most countries, including and especially the United States. Yet the idea that the Islamic Republic’s government is constantly on the verge of collapse due to the overwhelming majority of Iranians seeking the violent overthrow of their rulers is nothing short of fantasy.
As is the case in almost every country on earth, there are many people who seek revolution and changes to the system under which they live. Right now inside Iran, there are endless issues which the average Iranian will be able to expand upon at length, yet they do not wish to see the United States or Israel bomb their country in order to achieve whatever goals they have. The average Iranian also does not seek a foreign power to take them over, or the return of the Pahlavi Monarchy, or to be ruled by the MEK, these are opinions that you will hear most frequently in the diaspora communities primarily. These types of individuals will share videos from the time of the Shah, showing clips of women at the beach with their hair out, which is a gross misrepresentation of what their country looked like prior to 1979.
Since the Islamic Revolution took place, women are more represented in positions of power and across almost every profession, the population at large has access to and is better educated than under the Shah, and life expectancy has also grown. In addition to this, the videos you will see from the Shah’s time in power show the minority of Iranians who were privileged by the dictator regime, while the rest of the people were treated with contempt. Also, another factor that has to be kept in mind is that Iran is a multi-ethnic and diverse nation in various ways, with the majority of the country’s population adhering to their own conservative cultural norms. While there are many different aspects of Iran that could be elaborated on here, it suffices to say that unfortunately the snapshots presented to Western audiences by the mainstream media are widely inaccurate and it is just wrong for us to look at the Iranian people and their country through a narrow ultra-politicized Western lens.
When it comes to the death of President Raisi, some in the Western and Israeli media are even advocating that it is time to strike Iran in order to capitalize on the internal strife allegedly caused by the incident. The Telegraph even published an article entitled “The West must strike now, and collapse the Iranian regime“, which is not only advocating for an unhinged war of aggression that could possibly bring about World War 3, but is based upon ridiculous assumptions about Tehran to begin with.
It is quite interesting that after such a scenario it is almost completely acceptable for individuals describing themselves as “journalists” to be calling for criminal actions to be taken in order to once again illegally overthrow the government of Iran, which their leaders have already done in the past. It begs the question as to why these people believe they have the right to decide who rules a foreign country that most of them have never visited and know almost nothing about, other than the official propaganda nonsense that is fed to them constantly by the same outlets that tell us every single year that Tehran is secretly planning to build a nuclear bomb within the next few months.
There is of course another idea which has been floating around surrounding the circumstances of the helicopter crash, which suggests that foul play occurred. While this should not be ruled out entirely, I would argue that there will be no way to actually tell in this case that this assertion is true, it is in nobody’s interests to reveal such a thing and the only possible impact it could have, in the event that this was an assassination carried out by the Israeli Mossad for instance, is that during any future war between Iran and Israel, we could see more dramatic steps taken against certain Israeli targets. However, what we do know is that if a decision was made to fly in terrible weather conditions, such an accident is certainly plausible as a result, which is what the evidence suggests happened until this moment. It is possible that additional information will become available that changes that picture, but this would be irresponsible to attempt build a case on until more evidence emerges.
