After the deadly crash of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his latent Khamenei successor, the deep stable of figures directing to fill the vacuum Raisi’s loss creates may test the best leader.
Iran has confirmed that on Monday morning, President Ebrahim Raisi, and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian were killed in a fatal helicopter crash.
However, the tragic deaths of two senior Iranian high officials are a histrionic development at a time when multiple battles are uncontrolled in the region, but the president’s death will not affect the course of those combats significantly, with decisions over foreign policy, national diplomacy and war under the purview of Top Leader Ali Khamenei.
“The president of the Islamic Republic is an implementer, not a decision-maker,” described Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran. “Therefore, the policies of the Islamic Republic—the basics of those policies—will continue the same.”
President Ebrahim “works for the Supreme Leader,” noted Ori Goldberg of Reichman University. “Undoubtedly this man, because Raisi was voted in the least democratic elections the Islamic Republic ever needed.”
At the same time, though, the unexpected loss of Iran’s president produces a power vacuum that senior figures will start to take advantage of.
As per Iran’s constitution, “Article 131,” in the case of the president’s death, the first deputy for the time being takes up the presidency. Mohammad Mokhber, a Khamenei loyalist, presently fills that role. But according to the constitution, elections must be held within fifty days of such a situation.
There is no lack of powerful officials who have been waiting to avail themselves of this chance to move further up the government’s power structure, and the unexpected surprise of the death of President Ebrahim now presents itself as a hard test for Ali Khamenei.
Khamenei has to show that he can carry, not the country, but the leadership, through this changeover,” said Goldberg.
But more significantly, Raisi had been seen as the foremost candidate to replace Khamenei. He was greatly experienced as a priest, ex-chief justice and former head of a enormous foundation, in addition to being president.
“To have him off the field or debilitated, dead, what have you, is a real shock for the politics of the system,” said Brodsky.
While overshadowed by Raisi, the loss of Amir-Abdollahian is also significant, as he has been an enormously effective foreign minister, supervising a successful understanding with Saudi Arabia and steering a series of difficult disasters, with his powerful neighbor Pakistan.
However, Iran’s broad foreign policy won’t change, having to deal with unpredicted political disturbances is expected to take consideration away from the multi-front fight against Israel.
Now, Iran can be “a little more self-engaged, draped up in internal politics, as it sorts out the election for the next president,” noted Michael Makovsky, CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. The command also risks looking weak after a series of delays.
Tehran has been displaying flaws for months. On January 3, Islamic State terrorists murdered at least 84 people in two explosions near the grave of General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, as they cleared the fourth anniversary of his death in a United States drone strike in Iraq four years before. The previous month, Jaish al-Adl, a Sunni terrorist group, killed 11 Iranian police officials.
Iran, despairing to show some power, launched missiles into Pakistan, saying it was targeting Jaish al-Adl. But nuclear-armed Pakistan wouldn’t back down, beating back with arms and fighter jets within Iran the first bombing attack on Iranian soil since the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
Its direct call was that Iran agreed to reduce. Along Israel’s borders, Iran has seen its reliability come under the most burden.
Although Israel struggles to locate and board Hamas leaders in Gaza, it has shown an arresting ability and willingness to take out Iranian officials in Syria.
In April, Israel apparently killed the top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps official in Syria, Mohammad Reza Zahedi, and his deputy, Mohammad Haj Rahimi. In the last December, senior IRGC officer Brig. Gen. Razi Mousavi was murdered in an alleged Israeli attack in Damascus.
Iran had to show its regional substitutions, and its own citizens, that it could extract a price from Israel, particularly after Hamas had established that Israel could be shamed by its October 7 surprise attack. But Iran’s reply—a huge missile and drone attack that manifested its first-ever direct attack on the Jewish state—ddamaged nothing of value and prospered in bonding the West and many Arab countries under Israel’s protection.
The tragic deaths of two senior officials in an unexpected helicopter crash make the government look susceptible and incompetent. But if Ali Khamenei manages a smooth changeover, the Islamic Republic will be showing a measure of constancy at a problematic time.
And their remnants are the question of how Western leaders will respond to the death of a leader whose country is behind much of the terrorism and uncertainty in the Middle East and beyond, not to mention its critical military support for Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Besides, Raisi supervised the executions of thousands of political prisoners after the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988. What is positive is that Iran’s efforts to damage Israel and push the United States out of the region will continue, even with the fog regarding Raisi’s destiny now cleared.
