Little time? At the end of the text there is a summary.

At the age of 58, Ebrahim Raisi made two major career moves within a few days. First, the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appointed him head of the Iranian judiciary last week.

Then the expert council elected him on Tuesday as his deputy chairman. He is now the second man on the panel to elect a new political and religious leader in Iran in the case of Khamenei's demise.

These are strong indications that Khamenei has chosen the lawyer as his successor. The revolutionary leader is 80 years old this year and is injured.

THE MIRROR

Power distribution in Iran

Raisi is not just like Khamenei from the pilgrim town of Mashhad - ideologically, he is also fully in line with the head of state. As a teenager, he was an active supporter of the Islamic revolution against the Shah, by the age of 20, he became a prosecutor of the province of Hamadan. He moved to Teheran in the mid-1980s, and in 1989 he was promoted to chief prosecutor of the Iranian capital. He was not even 30 years old. In 2004, Mahmoud Shahroudi, the then Iranian attorney general, appointed him as his deputy. In 2014, he became the Iranian Attorney General.

A man full of contradictions

In 1988 Raisi was said to have been a deputy prosecutor of Tehran a member of the so-called death committee, which approved the execution of thousands of political prisoners without a court decision. He himself has never denied the allegations, but says that the opposition had received fair trials. He praised the elimination of the armed opposition in the 1980s, Raisi said last year.

Raisi likes to portray himself as the keeper of the pure doctrine of the Islamic revolution and champion against Western influence. So he is about decided opponent of music concerts and advocates of gender segregation. When President Hassan Rohani's government signed a Unesco agreement in 2015 that guaranteed equal access to education for men and women, Raisi protested sharply. The agreement contradicts the cultural values ​​of Iran and Islam. His resistance contributed to the fact that the agenda has never been implemented.

At the same time, Raisi is a man full of contradictions: on the one hand, he has declared that he prefers to decouple Iran from the global Internet, while at the same time using social networks to bring his messages to the people. On the one hand, he presents himself as a down-to-earth man, who has in particular the livelihood of the poor rural population in mind, on the other hand he stands since 2016 at the head of the religious foundation Astan-e Qods-e Razavi, which includes lands, banks, businesses, welfare institutions and newspapers and which has assets worth billions.

Raisi somehow has to become Ayatollah

On the one hand, Raisi has been well connected to the Iranian regime for 40 years, on the other hand, he staged in the 2017 presidential election as a populist outsider, who will fight against the widespread corruption of the elites. Nevertheless, he was clearly inferior to Rohani in the vote two years ago.

Raisi's rise within the Shiite clergy is also contradictory: Already at the age of 15 he entered a religious seminary and started a career as a religious scholar. Raisi, in the view of Iran, has now attained the rank of Hodschatoleslam-a middle tier within the Shiite scholarly hierarchy. In the meantime, however, Raisi could already be described as Ayatollah - that is the hierarchical level above the Hodschatoleslam.

REUTERS

Ali Khamenei (l.) And Ebrahim Raisi

After Iranian newspapers had criticized him for lacking the authority, Raisi put this title in the meantime again from. Meanwhile, however, there are on his website again single texts in which Raisi is referred to as Ayatollah, the news agency More, the close relations with Khamenei are said to be called Raisi as Ayatollah.

There is no universally defined method for classifying a scholar as Ayatollah. Rather, the title is awarded when a select number of other influential ayatollahs consider a cleric worthy and learned enough to carry the title. For Raisi's further progress, recognition as an ayatollah is crucial: for only an ayatollah has the authority to become head of state.

Khamenei was hastily promoted to the rank of ayatollah after Khomeini's death in 1989 in order to pave the way for him to head the state. After his demise, this scenario could soon be repeated with Raisi.

In summary: Ebrahim Raisi has risen in recent days to the head of the Iranian judiciary and vice-chairman of the Guardian Council. The career leaps are an indication that revolutionary leader Ali Khamenei has chosen the 58-year-old as his potential successor. In the eighties he is said to have approved the execution of thousands of oppositionists. Today, he heads one of the richest foundations in the country. But he still lacks the title of Ayatollahs.