Raisi, who was elected in 2021 as the president of Iran, redeemed his reputation as a tough Islamic ideologue and a strict social disciplinarian.
There are no reports indicating that the death of Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash over the weekend is anything other than an unfortunate accident. Aviation safety in Iran has long been a challenge thanks to the extensive international sanctions and difficulties in the maintenance of equipment. As investigations continue into the crash that also killed the Iranian Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, there is little reason to expect major changes in Tehran’s domestic and foreign policies after Raisi.
In Iran it is not the elected president who rules, but the “supreme leader”, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is not elected by the people, but an assembly of religious experts. In the Islamic Republic’s doctrine of “Velayat e Faqih”, or the rule of Islamic jurisprudence, power vests with the righteous Shia jurist who sits on top of the clerical establishment. Established in the wake of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, this system has survived multiple challenges to its authority and legitimacy.
Raisi, who was elected in 2021 as the president of Iran redeemed his reputation as a tough Islamic ideologue and a strict social disciplinarian. The regime’s critics had charged Raisi of involvement in the execution of thousands of political prisoners in the late 1980s. As judiciary chief, he was also accused of ordering widespread arrests and executions following the large-scale anti-regime protests in 2019-2020. As president of the Islamic Republic, Raisi oversaw the brutal crackdown on the movement for women’s rights that followed the custodial death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022. On the external front, Raisi’s brief presidency has seen an Iranian effort to normalise ties with its Arab neighbours, while intensifying confrontation with Israel and the West.
Unlike some of his predecessors, Raisi did not clash with the authority of the supreme leader, Khamenei. The tension between the elected leadership trying to represent the aspirations of the people and the establishment run by a small self-selecting elite of clerics has repeatedly expressed itself over the last few decades. Raisi — who was widely seen as the protege and potential successor to the ageing Khamenei, 85 — had less of an incentive to challenge the supreme leader. Nor were his political instincts reformist. While Raisi’s death might lead to rejigging the succession politics in Iran, it is unlikely to produce any transformation. The potential successors include Sayyid Mojtaba Hosseini, the son of Khamenei. Given Iran’s growing weight in the geopolitics of the Middle East, its unrealised economic potential, the growing fragility of Khamenei, who has ruled Iran since 1989, and tightly coiled domestic discontent, there will be much regional and global interest in the supreme leader’s next steps.
