Ebrahim Raisi has been president since 2021 Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died after his helicopter crashed in the mountains yesterday. Raisi was in line to be Iran’s next supreme leader, along with a clampdown on morality questions. Raisi’s hardline position had been all pervasive in domestic politics while he governed through a severe economic crisis and a historic escalation of the country’s conflict with Israel. Raisi took over as president in 2021, succeeding the moderate Hassan Rouhani, for a term marked by crisis and conflict. Return Of Morality Police Raisi was personally involved in two of the darkest periods of Iranian repression. A year after his election, the mid-ranking cleric ordered that authorities tighten the enforcement of Iran’s “hijab and chastity law” restricting women’s attire and behaviour. Iran saw a wave of protests triggered by the death in custody of Iranian-Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in September 2022 after her arrest for allegedly flouting dress rules for women. The nationwide protests presented one of the gravest challenges to Iran’s clerical rulers since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. …