Accidents occur in every single place, however not all accidents are equal. Many hours after preliminary information broke about an “incident” involving a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the nation’s state media has nonetheless not confirmed whether or not he’s useless or alive. Varied state retailers have revealed contradictory information—Was Raisi seen on video hyperlink after the accident? Was he not? Was the Nationwide Safety Council assembly? Was it not?—signaling chaos and panic. A supply in Tehran near the presidency instructed me that Raisi has been confirmed useless, and that the authorities are on the lookout for a method to report the information with out inflicting mayhem. I’ve not been capable of independently affirm this.
Iran doesn’t sound like a rustic wherein presidents die accidentally. However it additionally is a rustic wherein plane crash, because of the sorry state of infrastructure within the internationally remoted Islamic Republic. In earlier years, no less than two cupboard ministers and two main navy commanders have died in related crashes. Raisi’s chopper, which additionally carried Iran’s international minister and two prime regional officers, was passing via an infamously foggy and mountainous space in northwestern Iran. The “incident” may very properly have been an accident.
But suspicions will inevitably encompass the crash. In any case, air incidents that killed excessive political officers in Northern Rhodesia (1961), China (1971), Pakistan (1988), and Poland (2010) are nonetheless typically topic to hypothesis. On this case, a lot as within the others, one query will doubtless drive the hypothesis: Who stands to learn politically from Raisi’s loss of life? Even when the reply to this query doesn’t in the end inform us why the helicopter crashed, it might shed some mild on what is going to come subsequent within the Islamic Republic.
Raisi ascended to the presidency in 2021, in what seemed to be the least aggressive election Iran had held since 1997. Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had made positive that every one different critical candidates had been barred from working. Amongst these disqualified weren’t solely reformists but additionally centrist conservatives and even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former hard-line president whom Khamenei got here to see as a rival.
Raisi appeared to have been picked exactly as a result of he might by no means be a critical rival to Khamenei. In 2017, he revealed himself to be completely uncharismatic in electoral debates in opposition to then-President Hassan Rouhani. His time in workplace since 2021 additionally speaks not solely to his sheer incompetence but additionally to his political irrelevance. Some name him the Invisible President. Through the Girls, Life, Freedom motion, which rocked Iran from 2022 to 2023, few protesters bothered to shout slogans in opposition to Raisi, as a result of they knew that actual energy rested elsewhere.
For Khamenei, what mattered was that Raisi may very well be counted on to toe the regime’s line. Though competitors is tight, Raisi could have extra blood on his palms than another dwelling official of the Islamic Republic. For the reason that Eighties, the Islamic Republic has executed 1000’s of Iranian dissidents. The judiciary is the arm of the federal government that carries out this murderous operate, and Raisi has held main positions inside it from the very begin; he rose to turn into the pinnacle of the judiciary in 2019.
The identical qualities that doubtless made Raisi look like a protected regime alternative for the presidency additionally made him a major contender for succeeding Khamenei because the Supreme Chief. In response to the Iranian structure, solely a cleric with critical political expertise can turn into head of state. By now, many clerics who match that description have died or been politically marginalized (lots of them didn’t share Khamenei’s hard-line politics), leaving the sphere open to Raisi. In flip, many political observers anticipated that Raisi can be a weak supreme chief, permitting actual energy to move elsewhere—to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), for instance, or to different energy facilities round or ancillary to the regime. Who higher for such a place than an unimpressive yes-man?
Raisi belongs to a really specific precinct of Iran’s political elite, and up to now few years, others within the political class had come to fret concerning the ambition of the circles surrounding him. A local of the holy metropolis of Mashhad, in northeastern Iran, Raisi beforehand held the custodianship of the holy shrine within the metropolis, which can also be an financial empire in its personal proper. He’s married to the daughter of Mashhad’s Friday-prayer chief, an arch social conservative. Raisi’s spouse, Jamileh Alamolhoda, has performed an unusually public function, main some conservatives from exterior the couple’s regional cadre to fret that after Khamenei’s eventual loss of life, a “Mashhad clique” may come to the highest of the regime.
Raisi’s obvious passivity has additionally emboldened challengers amongst a band of significantly noxious hard-liners, who noticed his weak presidency as a possibility to lift their political profiles on the expense of extra established conservatives, such because the parliamentary speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. A few of these extremely hard-liners did properly within the parliamentary election earlier this yr, which was largely a contest throughout the hard-line camp. They ran a heated marketing campaign in opposition to Qalibaf, who commanded the help of the primary pro-regime conservative political events and many retailers of the IRGC.
For all of those causes, Raisi’s loss of life would alter the stability of energy amongst factions throughout the Islamic Republic. In response to the Iranian structure, his vp, Mohammad Mokhber, would assume the duties of the presidency, and a council consisting of Mokhber, Qalibaf, and the judiciary chief Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Eje’i must set up new elections inside 50 days.
Once I requested an official near Qalibaf concerning the political aftermath of the crash, he answered instantly: “Dr. Qalibaf would be the new president.”
He certainly wish to be. Qalibaf’s ambition is information to nobody; he has run for president a number of instances, beginning in 2005. Extra technocrat than ideologue, Qalibaf was a commander within the IRGC through the Iran-Iraq Warfare and can doubtless command no less than some help from inside its ranks. His lengthy tenure as mayor of Tehran (2005–2017) was marked by each a level of competence and fairly a little bit of corruption. His political enemies have lately highlighted circumstances of corruption linked to him and his household. An official near former President Rouhani tells me, “Qalibaf’s drawback is that he needs it an excessive amount of. Everybody is aware of he has zero ideas and can do something for energy.”
If Qalibaf registers to run in a unexpectedly organized presidential election, the Guardian Council may need a tough time rejecting him, given his deep hyperlinks to energy buildings in Iran. However would Khamenei be proud of the presidency passing to a technocrat with out correct Islamist credentials? Who else can be allowed to run, and will they defeat Qalibaf on the polls, as Ahmadinejad and Rouhani did respectively in 2005 and 2013?
What twists the plot is the truth that some regime officers and former officers who’re supportive of Qalibaf additionally advocate for Khamenei’s son Mojtaba to succeed his father because the supreme chief. Mojtaba Khamenei has lengthy been within the shadows, and little is understood concerning the 54-year-old’s politics or views, however he’s broadly held to be a critical contender for the workplace. May there be a discount between Mojtaba and Qalibaf that paves a path to energy for each of them?
When the Islamic Republic’s founding chief, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, died, in 1989, Khamenei changed him after making an unwritten pact with fellow cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who then assumed the presidency. The structure was swiftly modified to provide extra powers to the president. Rafsanjani would come to remorse the pact, as he was politically sidelined by Khamenei earlier than dying what many in Iran contemplate a suspicious loss of life, in 2017. May this cautionary story make either side cautious?
Many have anticipated a ferocious energy battle in Iran, however most anticipated it to observe Khamenei’s loss of life. Now we’re more likely to see no less than a costume rehearsal wherein varied factions will brandish their power. As for the folks of Iran, some have already began celebrating Raisi’s potential demise with fireworks in Tehran. Most Iranians barely really feel represented by any faction of the Islamic Republic, and a few may use a second of political disaster to reignite the road protests which have repeatedly beleaguered the regime up to now. The nation’s civic actions are exhausted following years of battle (greater than 500 folks had been killed in the latest spherical of protests, from 2022 to 2023). Nonetheless, no matter form the facility battle takes on the prime, the folks of Iran received’t obtain it passively for lengthy.
