The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) have reported that the administration of Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian regime’s new President, now houses government heads who have ties to organizations that are notorious for their part in Iran’s human rights abuses and terrorism plots, notably the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
In an online international summit on Iranian affairs held in July, President-elect of the NCRI, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi foreshadowed, prior to his inauguration, that Raisi’s rise to power would increase the “hostility and enmity between the Iranian regime and society.”
She said, “Neither the installment of Raisi nor the collection of murderers and thieves in his cabinet can save the regime from its inevitable overthrow.”
Ebrahim Raisi’s appointment to the presidential position was selected in advance by Ali Khamenei, the regime’s Supreme Leader. Under the regime’s theocratic system, the loyalty to the supreme leader by any candidate is highly vetted during the selection process. Candidates are immediately disqualified if they desire to challenge Khamenei’s preferred choice at any point during this process.
The NCRI said, “Recognizing the lack of free choice in this election especially, the vast majority of the Iranian people chose to boycott the electoral process. The voter turnout was less than ten percent, and even regime authorities were forced to acknowledge that the rate of participation was the lowest of any presidential election.”
The Iranian Resistance were the ones who called attention to Raisi’s responsibility for the deaths of thousands of political prisoners during the 1988 massacre, referring to him as the ‘henchman of 1988’.
At the time, Raisi was working as the deputy public prosecutor in Tehran. Under a fatwa issued by the regime’s founder, Ruhollah Khomeini, Raisi was appointed to the ‘death commissions’ and tasked with implementing Khomeini orders to prosecute members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) and sentence them with the death penalty. Over the course of 3 months in the summer of 1988, 30,000 political prisoners were executed.
The NCRI said, “Therefore, it is not surprising that among Raisi’s cabinet appointments there are individuals who are similarly subject to sanctions by both the US and the European Union, as well as those whose prior roles involved work for sanctioned entities. Raisi’s choice to head the Interior Ministry, Ahmad Vahidi, is even wanted by Interpol for his role in the 1994 bombing in Argentina.”
Amnesty International has said that the disregard and unwillingness to hold Raisi and other Iranian officials like him accountable for their crimes against humanity and allow them to be prosecuted by the international community shows just how entrenched the regime is with impunity.
The Iranian people refuse to turn a blind eye to the regime’s immunity from prosecution, as demonstrated by the protests that began the day following the selection of Raisi as Iran’s new president, and have continued to increase exponentially since.
The NCRI said, “Of course, if the international community should stand behind those people, their triumph over the regime would surely prove to be not only “inevitable” but imminent.”
