Zealots who would see Iran burn before giving in to global pressure

CLAMPDOWN BY MILITARY REGIME

- Marco Giannangeli

THE year since hardliner Ebrahim Raisi became president of Iran has been marked by a tumbling economy and skyrocketing human rights abuses.

His rule has already seen an increasingly militarised regime strive to clamp down on popular discontent at home while continuing to finance its proxies abroad.

But experts warned last night that with the “Butcher of Tehran” slated to replace Ayatollah Khamenei as Iran’s Supreme Leader, the West must do more to contain the nation’s geopolitical ambitions.

Despite the need for the country’s sanctioned gas and oil reserves to ease the global energy crisis, last week’s talks in Austria to revive the broken 2015 Joint Comp rehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal hold little chance of succeeding.

While this means Iran will not receive the sanctions relief it so desperately craves, it also leaves the West and Israel with the stark reality of having to find another way to prevent Tehran – which has a growing stockpile of uranium enriched to weapons- grade 60 per cent purity – from developing a nuclear bomb.

Raisi, 61, was already infamous when, backed by Khamenei, 83, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, he came to power on August 3 last year, following contentious elections.

As deputy prosecutor of Tehran in 1988, he was one of four people selected to oversee the massacre of 30,000 jailed activists.