'A soldier': New Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi comes to power with clear hard-line agenda

Iran's president-elect Ebrahim Raisi was elected in a landslide victory after Friday's vote. Here is what you need to know about the new president.

The conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi, the 61-year old new president-elect of Iran, heralds from a remote village in the northeast of the country, and after Friday's election victory, will take up residence in the presidential palace. He has taken on a number of influential roles in the Islamic Republic, most notably as Chief of the Judiciary, and his track record comes with a long list of alleged human rights violations. As predicted, Raisi won the Islamic Republic's presidential election with a landslide margin, on Friday with 61.9%, around 17.9 million votes. By contrast, the main rival, reformist Abdolnaser Hemmati, could only obtain just under 2.5 million votes. Crucially, however, the vote was marred by a low turnout -- which the regime considers a key factor in justifying its legitimacy -- with a turnout of 48.8%, the lowest turnout of all presidential elections since the 1979 revolution. In the run-up to the election, many Iranians had already decided to give up on the election, saying they felt no representation on either side of the political spectrum.