Sheila Nazarian
Newsweek, May 20, 2024
“Raisi’s unrelenting hostility towards Israel was a cornerstone of his foreign policy, reflecting the regime’s broader ideological commitment to the eradication of the world’s only Jewish state, with Raisi pledging to “destroy” the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv.”
In May 19, the president of Iran was killed when his helicopter crashed in a mountainous region of his country. As a woman born in Iran, I feel not just a sense of celebration at the death of this evil man, but of relief. It is a feeling I share with a great many of my countrymen, and—in particular—countrywomen. To understand why, you have to know that Ebrahim Raisi—though robed by his brutal regime with the dignity of ‘President’—was a mass murderer responsible for atrocities and oppression in Iran and across the region. This is why he is known as the “Butcher of Tehran.”
Raisi, seen as a likely successor to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, gained notoriety in the early days of the Islamic Republic. In 1988, as a young deputy prosecutor in Tehran, he was appointed to the “Death Commission,” a group responsible for the extrajudicial executions of thousands of political prisoners. The victims were subjected to sham trials that lasted mere minutes. Raisi played a pivotal role in these proceedings, deciding who would live and who would be sent to the gallows. One former political prisoner wrote that Raisi “clearly revelled in having power over life and death, and he wielded it freely in thousands of cases during that summer’s massacre. For those who have dealt with him personally, Raisi symbolizes the death of hope,” wrote former Iranian political prisoner Mahmoud Royaei.
As an Iranian-born Persian Jew, I know Iran—what the ayatollahs and their barbarous theocratic revolution have left of our once-proud land. When I was six years old, I escaped Iran with my family, underneath corn and burlap in the back of a hearse across the Pakistani border. I remember Iran after this dictatorship came to power, and I know how it treats its people: forcing medieval dress codes on women and forcing religious minorities into hiding through persecution, murdering dissidents, and exporting violence abroad. … [To read the full article, click here]