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. Numerous 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 searching for a method to report the information with out inflicting mayhem. I’ve not been in a position to independently affirm this.
Iran doesn’t appear to be a rustic during which presidents die accidentally. Nevertheless it additionally is a rustic during which plane crash, as a result of sorry state of infrastructure within the internationally remoted Islamic Republic. In earlier years, at the least two cupboard ministers and two main navy commanders have died in related crashes. Raisi’s chopper, which additionally carried Iran’s overseas minister and two prime regional officers, was passing via an infamously foggy and mountainous space in northwestern Iran. The “incident” would possibly very effectively have been an accident.
But suspicions will inevitably encompass the crash. In spite of everything, air incidents that killed excessive political officers in Northern Rhodesia (1961), China (1971), Pakistan (1988), and Poland (2010) are nonetheless usually topic to hypothesis. On this case, a lot as within the others, one query will probably drive the hypothesis: Who stands to learn politically from Raisi’s loss of life? Even when the reply to this query doesn’t finally inform us why the helicopter crashed, it may shed some gentle on what’s going to come subsequent within the Islamic Republic.
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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 operating. 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 may by no means be a critical rival to Khamenei. In 2017, he revealed himself to be completely uncharismatic in electoral debates towards 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. In the course of the Ladies, Life, Freedom motion, which rocked Iran from 2022 to 2023, few protesters bothered to shout slogans towards Raisi, as a result of they knew that actual energy rested elsewhere.
For Khamenei, what mattered was that Raisi could possibly be counted on to toe the regime’s line. Though competitors is tight, Raisi could have extra blood on his arms than another dwelling official of the Islamic Republic. Because the 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 perform, and Raisi has held main positions inside it from the very begin; he rose to turn out to be the pinnacle of the judiciary in 2019.
The identical qualities that probably made Raisi appear to be a protected regime alternative for the presidency additionally made him a main contender for succeeding Khamenei because the Supreme Chief. In keeping with the Iranian structure, solely a cleric with critical political expertise can turn out to be 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 sector open to Raisi. In flip, many political observers anticipated that Raisi can be a weak supreme chief, permitting actual energy to stream 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 previously few years, others within the political class had come to fret in regards to 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 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 position, main some conservatives from exterior the couple’s regional cadre to fret that after Khamenei’s eventual loss of life, a “Mashhad clique” would possibly come to the highest of the regime.
Learn: Ebrahim Raisi has blood on his arms
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 boost 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 effectively within the parliamentary election earlier this 12 months, which was largely a contest inside the hard-line camp. They ran a heated marketing campaign towards Qalibaf, who commanded the help of the principle pro-regime conservative political events and many retailers of the IRGC.
For all of those causes, Raisi’s loss of life would alter the steadiness of energy amongst factions inside the Islamic Republic. In keeping with the Iranian structure, his vice chairman, 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 manage new elections inside 50 days.
Once I requested an official near Qalibaf in regards to the political aftermath of the crash, he answered instantly: “Dr. Qalibaf would be the new president.”
He absolutely wish to be. Qalibaf’s ambition is information to nobody; he has run for president a number of occasions, beginning in 2005. Extra technocrat than ideologue, Qalibaf was a commander within the IRGC throughout the Iran-Iraq Conflict and can probably command at the least 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 downside 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 rapidly organized presidential election, the Guardian Council may need a tough time rejecting him, given his deep hyperlinks to energy constructions in Iran. However would Khamenei be pleased with 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 in regards to 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 offer 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 think about a suspicious loss of life, in 2017. May this cautionary story make each side cautious?
Many have anticipated a ferocious energy wrestle in Iran, however most anticipated it to comply with Khamenei’s loss of life. Now we’re more likely to see at the least a costume rehearsal during which varied factions will brandish their energy. 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 would possibly use a second of political disaster to reignite the road protests which have repeatedly beleaguered the regime previously. The nation’s civic actions are exhausted following years of wrestle (greater than 500 folks had been killed in the newest spherical of protests, from 2022 to 2023). Nonetheless, no matter form the facility wrestle takes on the prime, the folks of Iran gained’t obtain it passively for lengthy.
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