Raisi’s funeral is about a lot more than the late Iranian president

From his days as a clerical student, to overseeing executions as part of the judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi’s life has been intimately tied with Iran’s tumultuous modern history. Yet after all that, his presidency was notably unremarkable.

From his days as a clerical student, to overseeing executions as part of the judiciary, Ebrahim Raisi’s life has been intimately tied with Iran’s tumultuous modern history. Yet after all that, his presidency was notably unremarkable. Unlike previous Iranian presidents, Raisi seemed content to serve as an empty vessel that carried out the reactionary policies of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the final arbiter on policymaking. He showed none of the subtle pushback of his predecessor, the moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani. He also lacked the charisma of conservative former presidents who were happy to do Khamenei’s bidding – such as the firebrand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – but who sought to carve out autonomy for the position of the presidency. So, when foreign dignitaries from a whopping 68 countries gathered for Raisi’s funeral on Thursday, they may not have been preoccupied with thoughts of the late president. This was not a game-changing death like the 2020 assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, the military mastermind credited with creating a strategic stranglehold over much of the Middle East and helping to put the US on the backfoot. Raisi’s absence, in contrast, is unlikely to be felt. Yet his untimely death could hardly have come at a more pivotal time for Iran. “Foreign dignitaries will be trying to get a read of the country,” Washington-based Iran analyst and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute Trita Parsi told CNN. “This is also an opportunity for many of them to manifest how their relationship with Iran has changed.”