Today, Tuesday, Ebrahim Raisi is officially inaugurated as Iran's president after winning the recent elections, while Israel criticized sending the European Union as a representative to the inauguration ceremony.
Raisi (60 years old) will succeed Hassan Rouhani, who has held two consecutive terms in the presidency (since 2013), and his reign witnessed a policy of relative openness to the West, the most prominent of which was the conclusion of the 2015 Vienna Agreement on the nuclear program with 6 major powers (the United States, Britain, France, China Russia, and Germany).
Raisi will be appointed during a ceremony in which Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ratifies the "rule of the presidency" and the victory of the former head of the judiciary in the elections last June, which witnessed the lowest participation rate in a presidential vote since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.
On Thursday, Raisi, who won 62% of the vote, will be sworn in before the Shura Council (Parliament), which is dominated by conservatives, in a step that will be followed by presenting the names of his candidates for ministerial positions in order to gain the confidence of MPs in their nomination.
Addressing the economic and social crisis mainly due to the sanctions - the consequences of which were increased by the “Covid-19” pandemic, will be the first task of Raisi, who, during the 2021 elections and when he lost to Rouhani in 2017, raised the two slogans of defending the marginalized classes and fighting corruption.
A researcher at the European University Institute in Italy Clement Terme told AFP that a major main goal "will be to improve the economic situation by strengthening economic relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and neighboring countries," by "establishing an economic system that protects Iran's economic growth from American political choices." , and enhances its exchanges with neighboring countries, Russia and China.
Raisi will take office while Iran is engaged with the major powers and with the indirect US participation in talks to revive the nuclear agreement through a settlement that lifts US sanctions and returns Washington to it, in exchange for Tehran's return to commitment to nuclear commitments that it retracted after Washington's withdrawal.
Raisi - who is close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - had previously emphasized that he would support talks that would achieve "results" for the people, but would not allow "negotiations for the sake of negotiation."
Khamenei, who has the final say in the country's supreme policies, confirmed last week that the experience of the Rouhani government proved that "trusting the West does not work."
European post
For its part, Israel considered that the European Union's decision to send diplomat Enrique Mora to attend the inauguration of the new Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi was a "miscalculation".
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said - in a statement - that the decision is "puzzling and shows a miscalculation," and considered that "the participation of a representative of the European Union in the event comes a few days after Iran killed two civilians - one of them from a member state of the European Union - in a terrorist act by state” against a civilian shipping company.
Israel, the United States, Britain and Romania accused Iran of being behind an attack on an Israeli oil tanker in the Sea of Oman last week, which Tehran denied.