Potential consequences of Raisi's death

Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian have been killed in a helicopter crash in northwest Iran on Sunday. Iranian state TV announced his death on Monday.

Raisi, who was very close to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was known as a hardline religious leader. Because of this, he has faced massive Internal protests against his government. Sixty-three-year-old Raisi was elected president in a second attempt in 2021 and has ordered a tightening of the country's morality laws since taking office. Many influential moderate and reformist candidates were banned from the election, and the majority of the country's electorate did not vote. In other words, he was not a popular or powerful leader like Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei. Although many believe he was grooming himself to succeed Khamenei, he was not even as much talked about around the world as the country's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or others military officials. So it doesn't seem like Iran is going to be in any kind of major crisis over his death as the final decision on the country's foreign policy and war comes from Khamenei.

In present, there are many world leaders who are the most powerful or one-man show heads of state in their countries. Such as Russia's Vladimir Putin, North Korea's Kim Jong Un or Chinese President Xi Jinping. If these heads of the state die, the country would be in dire straits. It will not be like that in the case of Iran. Under Iran’s constitution, if a president dies in office, the first vice president takes the helm. In this case, it is Mohammad Mokhber who becomes acting president. This, of course, is subject to the Supreme Leader Khamenei – who remains in charge of all state matters in Iran – giving his assent. Khamenei announced the name of current Vice President Mohammad Mokhber as the new interim president of Iran on Monday. Along with this, he also announced 5 days of national mourning in the death of President Raisi. Meanwhile, a council comprising the first vice president, the Speaker of Iran’s Parliament and the head of the judiciary must arrange an election for a new president within 50 days. As per the timetable, a presidential election was slated to occur in 2025.

However, this time the death of the Iranian president is different and is at the center of discussion around the world. Because he died in an accident at a time when the Middle East is rattling on the issue of Israel and Gaza. Even recently, unprecedented in history, Iran launched drone-attack on Israel. US researchers have warned that Iran is rapidly enriching uranium to make a nuclear bomb. The entire Middle East, including Iran, is in full gear. Iran-backed (proxy) fighters such as Lebanon's Hezbollah, Yemen's Houthis, Palestine's Hamas, and various militias in Iraq and Syria are more active than ever. In this situation, for whatever reason, the fact that the president of Iran himself was killed in an accident at this time is a matter of surprise to many, or it is natural to think that it is a coincidence or part of sabotage. However, it is assumed that there will not be any problems in Iran's energy, nuclear program and state management.

Who was Ebrahim Raisi
Born on December 14, 1960, Raisi was an Iranian cleric, prosecutor, and politician who served as Iran’s head of the judiciary from 2019 to 2021. Raisi grew up in the city of Mashhad, an important religious center for the Twelver Shiʿah as the burial place of the eighth imam ʿAlī al-Riḍā. Raised in a clerical family, he received a religious education. In 1975 he attended seminary in Qom, the foremost intellectualcenter of Shiʿi Islam, and studied under some of Iran’s most prominent clerics. At a time when Iranians were broadly dissatisfied with the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, many of the seminarians at Qom were engaged with the revolutionary ideals of Ruhollah Khomeini, whose interpretation of velāyat-e faqīh(guardianship of the jurist) sought to ensure clerical oversight of the government’s policy and administration. Raisi was purportedly an active participant in the events of 1978–79 that drove the shah into exile and established a system of government based on Khomeini’s vision.