After the death of the Iranian president, Tehran faces a double challenge – Technologist

The death of Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi at the age of 63 in a helicopter crash on May 19 ushers in a period of political uncertainty in Iran, as the Middle East is shaken by the war in Gaza and the succession to the 85-year-old Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, Ali Khamenei, looms large.

Raisi died after meeting his Azeri counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, on Sunday morning at the inauguration of a dam on the Araxe River, along the border with Azerbaijan. His helicopter crashed in dense fog as he headed for the city of Tabriz, where he was due to visit an oil refinery.

The funeral ceremony in honor of the Iranian president and those accompanying him, including the influential foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, began on Tuesday morning in Tabriz. The bodies will then be transferred to Tehran and the religious city of Qom for a funeral procession. The president’s remains will be interred in his hometown, Mashhad, in the northeast of the country.

Paying tribute to the deceased on Monday, May 20, the head of the judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, explained the place acquired by Raisi in the Iranian political game over the course of his career: “Before becoming president, Raisi, with the exception of a short period, mainly held various positions within the judiciary. In recent years, he [had] become the point of consensus for the various [conservative] currents” that make up Iranian power. In other words, while the late president’s ability to govern when the country was struggling with an economic crisis and the regime was being challenged on the streets and at the ballot box may not have shone through, he did have the ability to bring everyone in his camp into agreement.

Loyal to the Leader

With this sudden death, the Iranian regime is faced with a twofold challenge: to find and elect a new president within the constitutionally stipulated 50-day timeframe, and to move forward on the perilous path of appointing a successor to the Supreme Leader and strongman, Khamenei, at a time when Raisi was regularly floated as his successor. Khamenei’s detractors within the regime claim that his son, Mojtaba, 55, has ambitions to replace him.

A presidential election is due to be held as early as June 28, according to state television. In the meantime, the first vice-president, Mohammad Mokhber, a 68-year-old of the shadows, is acting as interim president.

Since his election in June 2021, in a massively boycotted election, Raisi had been the president most loyal to Khamenei during his long reign, carrying out the Supreme Leader’s orders and directives without batting an eyelid. The religious leader, stung by the defeat of his favorite candidate in the 2017 election by the technocrat Hassan Rohani, had taken care to prepare the course for 2021. The Council of Guardians of the Constitution – a kind of Constitutional Council that filters election candidacies – had then ruled out any serious contender who might stand in Raisi’s way.

You have 63.77% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.