Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died yesterday in a helicopter crash. The country’s foreign minister also died in the accident, which state media said was caused by a technical failure. Iranian VP Mohammad Mokhber will assume the role of acting president and must organize elections for a new president within 50 days. (New York Times)
After taking office in 2021, Raisi was able to carve out considerable influence for himself in a role that typically operates under significant institutional constraints. Technically, the president is the second-highest ranking official in Iran, but Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Iranian regime’s dominant factions hold the real decision-making power.
Compared to his predecessors, who were often in tension with these factions, Raisi was in total alignment with them, serving as an effective executor, rather than a formulator, of policy. That might have made Raisi unpopular among Iranians. But it made him a powerful figure in the Iranian political system, while also generating speculation that he could be a potential successor to Khamenei, who has ruled for more than three decades and is rumored to be in poor health.
In some ways, Raisi’s death simplifies the succession conversation by removing him as an option, potentially paving a path for Khamenei’s son Mojtaba to assume the role. But Raisi was also considered a potential compromise option for the regime’s often bitterly divided factions, so his absence could complicate the process when Khamenei does need to be replaced.
The more immediate question, though, is who will replace Raisi as president. Technically, his successor will be chosen in a national election, but the regime vets the list of eligible candidates. And as we’ve written in a prior Daily Review, the remnants of Iran’s reformist and reformist-adjacent factions have been sidelined in the country’s politics, even as the balance of power among conservative hardliners has shifted away from some of the country’s longstanding power-broker elite families and toward military-aligned factions. That means it’s all but certain the next president will fall in line with the regime’s hardline policy preferences.
The main unknowns are whether the next president will serve as a figurehead or as a figure of influence like Raisi, and whether he will be more aligned with the regime’s clerical or military factions. A weak leader would simplify the inevitable succession process for the supreme leader by not adding more options, but could also leave Iran more vulnerable at a time in which it is facing a number of significant challenges. Among those are:
- a struggling economy
- a now-public shadow war with Israel
- relations with Washington, which have ironically shifted toward a more solid footing as both sides try to avoid a regional conflagration, but could easily shift back following the U.S. presidential election later this year
- potential reconciliation with Saudi Arabia, which must be shepherded from declarative aspirations to substantive engagement
- shifting relations with Russia amid the war in Ukraine, and with China amid an increasingly multipolar world