Reuters has reported that “Hardline Shi'ite cleric Ebrahim Raisi announced he would run in Iran's May presidential election, challenging moderate President Hassan Rouhani's economic record and his policy of detente with the West. The former prosecutor-general who enjoys the support of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, could pose a real challenge to Rouhani's bid for a second term.”

Worrying? Not really. It’s actually comforting.

If you ask Israelis, Americans, or most Westerners whom they prefer as the next president of Iran, they most likely would vote with their heart, emotionally opting for the “moderate” candidate - and they think that Hassan Rouhani is that  man. But although most free thinkers in the West want to see the rise of a pragmatic leader who would seek normalization of relationships with the West, would stop threatening Israel with annihilation, would abandon Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons, and strive for acceptance by the rest of the civilized world, this is not what Rouhani brings to the table.

A Hassan Rouhani win will not be beneficial for Israel and for the rest of the civilized world. Ebrahim Raisi, hardline Shi’ite cleric, would be the best PR Israel could have hoped for. He would make a much more compelling case for not letting Iran acquire an acceptance status in the eyes of the Western world.

Ebrahim Raisi would become, once again, much like Rouhani’s predecessor, the ugly façade, making all intelligent people pay attention to Iran’s bullying, conspiring and directing global terror activities, rewriting history, and telling all of us how much he would want to wipe Israel off the map.

He would alert us, letting us in on Iran’s intentions. His denials of Iran’s quest for nukes would not be believable. His demeanor and his personality would invite suspicion, hostility and antipathy.

Ebrahim Raisi would become a wake-up call, the horn of an incoming train, the canary in the coal mine—he is my kind of guy.
Many Americans have been unaware of the upcoming danger Iran has been posing to the world because of Rouhani's false mask of moderation. But Mr. Ebrahim Raisi would make good where Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, has seen only a limited success—convincing Americans that the Iranian regime was dangerously militant, that the US could become a victim of Iran's hate-driven, insane Islamic objectives—that there is still time for preventive action.

In addition to raising awareness of the upcoming Iranian threat to the US, Mr. Ebrahim Raisi would be successful in stirring up emotions. His potentially flaming rhetoric, lies, hypocrisy, denial of facts and history, his potential genocidal threats, and his fanaticism would serve to reinforce the conviction to the American public of the ugly truth that Rouhani's smiles covered—that the Iranian regime and its leaders are evil.

The president of Iran serves at the pleasure of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—a right-wing extremist, a religious madman and the true leader of the Iranian dictatorship. When it comes to foreign policy, to military-related decisions such as “nukes or no-nukes”, Khamenei is the only decision maker. The president is merely a façade, a puppet placed in front of the world as the key messenger, delivering the Supreme Leader’s edicts.

Ebrahim Raisi would become a wake-up call, the horn of an incoming train, the canary in the coal mine—he is my kind of guy.

The Iranian 'election' is a travesty. It bears the same stench as elections in the former Soviet Union, Mubarak’s Egypt, and other dictatorships where it does not matter who votes for what candidate. The only thing that matters is who does the counting, or who picks the candidates.

Imagine an election in the US where the only candidates allowed to compete for the top job are members of the extreme right or extreme left, or picture an Israeli election where no party other than Meretz is on ballot. This is what elections in Iran are like.

An election for the Iranian presidency level contains a great deal of peril since a Rouhani win of the phony election may be perceived as a victory for moderation by the West, only because the current Iranian president does not come out of his leech-filled closet. A win by a perceived soft-spoken or a perceived moderate like Rouhani might enable Iran to break out of its isolation, avoid new sanctions, grant legitimacy to the Ayatollah’s regime, then move more rapidly toward the bullying all its neighboring countries while striving for the destruction of the Jewish state. Anyone who can put down that crack pipe and get a grip on reality could see the jaw teeth of that trap.

Electing a soft-spoken lipstick-wearing pig for president of Iran can only contribute to a faster-growing, untreated cancer. Masking a problem does not make it go away; it only wards off treatment; it only speeds up the emergence of its ugly end.