Khamenei promoted Raisi in 1989 to deputy chair of the Assembly of Experts, the body in charge of selecting the next supreme leader. Raisi continued to climb up the regime's ranks in the judiciary, continuing his crimes against the Iranian people.

Ebrahim Raisi, the new candidate in Iran's presidential election

Analysts are voicing a variety of opinions over the fact that Raisi will tighten the race and make the stretch more difficult for Rouhani, and portraying a broader image of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, ill with prostate cancer, who is grooming Raisi to succeed him, using the presidency as a springboard.

Born in 1960, Raisi was involved in the regime's judiciary since early after Iran's 1979 revolution.  In 1988, as Tehran's deputy prosecutor, Raisi was a member of the four-man team known as the "Death Commission," appointed by Iranian regime founder Ruhollah Khomeini, to massacre all political prisoners in Iran's prisons who maintained their opposition.  Over 30,000 political prisoners, mostly members and supporters of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), were sent to the gallows in a span of mere months.

Last summer, a sound file surfaced, dating back to 1988 and around 20 days after the massacre began, of Khomeini's successor, Hossein Ali Montazeri, meeting with Death Commission members, including Raisi, and describing the massacre as the most horrifying crime carried out by the Iranian regime.  Subsequent reports showed how Raisi played an active role and was known as the most ruthless Death Commission member.

Raisi's announcement on Thursday, as reported by the semi-official Tasnim news agency, comes a day after two other members of the "hardliners" faction, former firebrand president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Tehran mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, opted out.