Iran's Raisi’s death raises longer-term uncertainty

The president's demise may not affect Iran's energy role, but heightens uncertainty over the country's long-term leadership, writes Nader Itayim

The death of Iran's president, Ebrahim Raisi, in a helicopter crash on 19 May has unleashed a host of questions as to what lies ahead for the Islamic Republic at a time when it is already facing a slew of challenges within its borders and beyond. The nature of Iran's leadership suggests there will be little immediate change, irrespective of who the next president is, but the longer-term impact looks far more uncertain.

The political shock is unlikely to augur any change in the oil market role of Opec's third-largest producer. It has steadily raised covert crude exports to China over the last year, despite being under US sanctions — although it could soon face new challenges on that front. Iran continues to supply its Yemeni proxy the Houthis with weapons to disrupt Red Sea shipping, in opposition to Israel's actions in Gaza. And conflict between Israel and Iran recently became open and direct for the first time, but pulled back from the brink without escalating into a conflagration that could catch the key oil producing region of the Mideast Gulf in its crossfire.

Against this turbulent backdrop, Raisi lost his life travelling back to Iran from Azerbaijan, along with his foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and two other officials. Investigations into the cause of the crash are ongoing, but Iranian officials are roundly pointing to difficult weather conditions.

Raisi's demise has thrown Iran's election cycle into disarray. The country was due to hold its next presidential election in the summer of 2025, but the government has now had to schedule one for 28 June. Despite his less-than-stellar performance in his nearly three years in office — Iran's economy is in dire straits, inflation hit 40pc this year and the Iranian rial has slipped by 15pc against the US dollar in the past 12 months — Raisi was still seen as a shoo-in for re-election.

This was a reflection of Iran's electoral system, in which most candidates that register to run are disqualified after vetting by the powerful conservative-dominated Guardian Council, leaving only a few that the council and Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, deem acceptable. Its decision to disqualify all prominent moderate and reformist candidates in the last election in 2021 paved the way for Raisi — an ultra-conservative former chief justice — to win the presidency after losing to the more moderate incumbent Hassan Rohani in 2017.

Four funerals and an election

With the country in mourning this week, nobody has yet publicly thrown their hat into the ring. But several familiar names are beginning to make the rounds in Iranian media. To date, two stand out. Iran's now caretaker head of state, Mohammad Mokhber, would — despite his limited political career — represent a degree of continuity for the leadership, and is increasingly being mentioned in discussions around the presidency. As is parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf.

There is also the possibility that the Guardian Council green lights some popular, more moderate-leaning candidates, such as Rohani's former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif or former parliament speaker Ali Larijani, in an attempt to draw an increasingly disenchanted and apathetic electorate back to the polls. The 2021 election saw a voter turnout of just 49pc, down from 73pc in 2017, while the more recent parliamentary elections in March saw 42pc participation nationwide — and just 7pc in the capital, Tehran — down from 63pc in 2016.

But Iran watchers are not holding their breath. "I am not optimistic they will try to open up the field," Washington DC-based Centre for International Policy senior fellow Sina Toossi says. "Yes, there is a legitimacy crisis. But if past elections tell us anything, it is that they feel they don't need that high a turnout, and that they can repress any protest," he says.

Whatever the outcome of the ballot, there is little expectation that it will translate into any material change, because the country's power dynamics place the supreme leader, and not the president, as the ultimate decision-maker. "The role of the president has already been marginalised significantly," according to Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder and chief executive of Bourse and Bazaar Foundation, a think-tank focused on Iran's economy. "Now, the president dies, and it's surprisingly inconsequential from a policy standpoint because the president wasn't an independent political operator."

As such, most, if not all, of Iran's most critical and strategic policy decisions will remain in place — from its support of proxy groups in the region, to its "look to the east" policy, which has seen Tehran bolster its ties with Beijing, Moscow and a host of central Asian countries. What could change is how well a new administration delivers in these areas, relative to the Raisi administration.

Nowhere is this likely to show itself more than in foreign policy, where Raisi arguably saw his biggest achievements, including the re-establishment of ties with long-time regional rival Saudi Arabia in March last year, as part of his administration's push to improve relations with Iran's immediate neighbours in the Mideast Gulf.

"[Former foreign minister] Amir-Abdollahian was not defining policy, but when it came to being a messenger, he was a good fit for that regional policy," Batmanghelidj says. "He spoke the language, he knew the file, and they knew him. [His successor] Ali Bagheri-Kani has a different profile." Conversely, Bagheri-Kani was spearheading indirect nuclear negotiations with the US for the Raisi administration until the talks broke down in 2022. Should Bagheri-Kani be kept on by a new president, that will hold him in good stead if the talks were to be revived.

Supreme uncertainty

Raisi's rise to the presidency in 2021 is widely accepted to have been engineered by those in the upper echelons of Iran's political elite. As a protege of the supreme leader, and someone lacking his own political base, Raisi was considered by Khamenei as entirely dependable to carry out his vision for the Islamic Republic. "Raisi was unique in how much of his track record was just being Khamenei's man," Toossi says. "So finding another figure like that is going to be difficult."

Khamenei's trust in Raisi appeared so deep that even before 2021 he had been touted as a potential front-runner to eventually succeed the now 85-year-old supreme leader. That was at least one factor behind his relatively quick rise. Khamenei's second son, Mojtaba, has been repeatedly suggested as another leading prospect to potentially succeed his father. For many, it appeared a straight contest between the younger Khamenei and Raisi. This would imply that Raisi's death has effectively cleared the path for Mojtaba to succeed his father. But the latter's candidacy, let alone his ascent, remains anything but certain.

"For now, Mojtaba does not strike me as a viable candidate," Geneva Graduate Institute senior research associate Farzan Sabet says. "A son succeeding a father smacks too much of monarchy. He has not held senior political, executive or administrative posts, he has very little public profile, and does not seem to have real standing among the Shia clergy." What is more, Mojtaba has for many years held significant sway over the office of the supreme leader, a key focus of economic and political power in Iran's system of governance. "He has carved out a role… [that] has a lot of influence," Batmanghelidj says. "Why would he jeopardise [that]?" Assuming that is the case, the prospective post-Khamenei leadership of the region's most disruptive power faces new uncertainty that may prove far more consequential than its president's death.

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