When Ebrahim Raisi first contested Iran’s presidency in 2017, the sombre conservative cleric lost badly, failing to win over aspirational voters who had pinned their hopes on the republic’s nuclear deal to open up the country.
Four years on, the collapse of the 2015 accord Iran signed with world powers, a withering economic crisis triggered by US sanctions, disillusioned voters and the regime’s determination to have a hardliner back in office paved the way for his election victory with 62 per cent of the vote.
But to many inside and outside the republic his win bears the marks of a pyrrhic victory.
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