When Ebrahim Raisi, the custodian of Iran’s largest religious endowment, announced his entrance into the 2017 presidential election, he stressed that he would run as an independent for all Iranians and “apart from the current political groupings.” Even before the announcement, Raisi had gone to great lengths to not get involved in partisan bickering and avoided directly attacking incumbent President Hassan Rouhani by name. However, not only can Raisi’s credentials as a conservative candidate not be denied, there are growing signs that Raisi’s presidency would in policy resemble that of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s divisive eight years.
In one of his first moves since being one of the six candidates approved to run, Raisi chose Ali Nikzad as his chief of staff. Nikzad served as minister of transportation and housing, minister of housing and urban development, and acting minister of information and communications technology under Ahmadinejad’s second term, a time when the president was bringing like-minded allies into his Cabinet while purging it of traditional conservatives.
