When it comes to the things that matter to Israel – Iran’s nuclear program, its development of other advanced weaponry, its proxies around the Middle East and more – the person calling the shots is Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Hardliner” or “reformer,” as many commentators call the different sides of the narrow political field Khamenei permits, no president truly has a say in the Supreme Leader’s calls for genocide against Israel and steps toward the bomb.
However, with the Iranian attack on an Israeli-managed ship near Oman on Friday, killing the vessel’s Romanian captain and a British crew member, Raisi is entering office with a bang – literally – and Israel is using its full diplomatic weight, and more, in response.
Plus, Khamenei is using Raisi’s presidency as a reason to delay, and perhaps even withdraw entirely from, negotiations with the US to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal.
Raisi, known as the “Butcher of Tehran,” is Iran’s former chief justice responsible for thousands of executions in 1988 and the violent suppression of demonstrations in 2009. As a result, the US put him under sanctions for human rights violations in 2019, and Sweden has a pending war crimes trial against him. Raisi was elected president in a vote in which Khamenei pruned and approved the candidates, and in which turnout was under 50%.
A top Israeli official pointed fingers at Raisi in the immediate aftermath of the Mercer Street bombing by a UAV: “The Iranian attack took place days before the swearing-in of the new president Raisi, a confidant of Iran’s Supreme Leader, who was responsible for the mass executions of dissidents. The masks are coming off, and no one can pretend that they don’t know the nature of the Iranian regime.”
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid publicly said Iran is behind the attack, and Bennett said Israel has the intelligence to prove it.
Bennett said he expects the world to put a stop to Iran’s aggression, but that Israel knows “how to send a message to Iran in our own way,” hinting at covert Israeli action against the Islamic Republic. READ MORE
