Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian president who died in a helicopter crash on Sunday, was a hardliner who had been instrumental in the last few years in steering Iran back towards the more uncompromising beliefs of the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary founders.
A supporter of deeply conservative values on the domestic front, in terms of foreign policy, Raisi also carved out an increasingly aggressive stance, and it was on his watch that Tehran opted to launch its recent unprecedented missile and drone strike against Israel, bringing the two countries into direct and open conflict for the first time.
