What unpopular president’s death means for continuity vs. change in Iran

Even as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s helicopter remained missing and his condition unknown late Sunday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sought to calm the nation.

Pray for your president, he said. But if he does not come back, “rest assured that there will be no disruption in the country’s affairs.”

Mr. Raisi was confirmed dead Monday when the remains of the helicopter were found on a steep hillside in northwest Iran locked in by fog and bad weather. Also killed in the crash, which state media attributed to mechanical failure, were Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and other senior officials returning from a trip to Azerbaijan.

First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber will assume the role of president, Mr. Khamenei said Monday, until elections can be held to replace Mr. Raisi.

The loss of Iran’s hard-line president comes at a fraught moment for the Islamic Republic, which is under pressure both at home and abroad like never before in recent decades. Analysts, however, expect few changes to strategy or policy – just as Mr. Khamenei promised.

Yet with Mr. Raisi’s name struck from atop the list of possible candidates to succeed the 85-year-old supreme leader, elite jockeying may ensue that could shape the future trajectory of Iran.

“The reality is that no Iranian president in recent history has gone as far as President Raisi in disempowering the executive branch,” says Ali Vaez, director of the Iran project at the International Crisis Group. “He will be remembered as an unpopular president who turned the role of the chief executive of the Islamic Republic into that of a yes man.”

Mr. Raisi won the most votes in a choreographed 2021 contest in which all reform-minded and other consequential conservative candidates were ruled ineligible. The election saw the lowest voter turnout by far of any Iranian presidential race since the 1979 Islamic Revolution – less than 50%.

“I expect more continuity than change, especially when it comes to foreign policy,” says Mr. Vaez, noting that the supreme leader and Revolutionary Guard set Iran’s regional and nuclear policies, and President Raisi and his foreign minister were “mere spokespersons for those policies.”

Another reason not to expect change is because, while the Islamic Republic is “at the nadir of its legitimacy at home,” he says, it is also “at the zenith of its exclusionary policies – which means it is most likely going to disqualify any candidates who are even considered loyal critics of the system, and would only allow candidates who are as subservient as President Raisi to assume office.”

Mr. Raisi was associated with some of the Islamic Republic’s most repressive episodes. He played a key role as a judge on a four-person panel that came to be known as the “death committee,” which in 1988 led to the swift executions of some 5,000 prisoners. Mr. Raisi also presided over the brutal crackdown on nationwide protests that were triggered in 2022 by the killing of a young Kurdish woman by what’s known as the morality police for allegedly not fully covering her hair. Rights groups estimate that more than 500 died.

The Tehran Times announced the news of the president’s death with a banner headline, “Martyrdom in the line of duty,” and official media trumpeted Mr. Raisi’s achievements. But there was also some celebration – even fireworks in some Kurdish areas of western Iran – and countless jokes and memes mocking the late president on social media.

Indeed, inside Iran an increasing portion of the population has been systematically disenfranchised by an elite hard-line minority, which controls every lever of power and has violently demonstrated that it brooks no dissent.

Outside Iran, the country’s indirect shadow war against Israel and American interests in the Middle East – a war waged via Iran-backed “Axis of Resistance” regional forces – turned into a risky direct confrontation last month. Iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel from its own soil April 13 in retaliation for an Israeli strike against Iranian generals in Syria.

While analysts note that conservative rule in Iran has been carefully solidified in recent years, the cost has been high in terms of regime popularity.

Meanwhile, the upcoming emergency presidential vote, which must be held within 50 days, could ultimately have a bearing on who will succeed Mr. Khamenei.

“The impact of Raisi’s death on leadership succession will be most acutely felt in how Khamenei approaches the early elections,” says Mohammad Ali Shabani, editor of Amwaj.media, a London-based news site focusing on Iran, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula countries.

For decades, Mr. Khamenei cast Iran’s high election turnouts as evidence of the Islamic Revolution’s popular mandate, and often mocked foreign elections’ low turnout as proof of indifference, says Mr. Shabani. In Iran, voter turnout has dropped since 2000, including a record low of 8% in Tehran on May 10, in a parliamentary runoff vote.

The death of Mr. Raisi may present an opportunity to “reverse course, to get voters back into the political process,” says Mr. Shabani. But that would also require a strategic decision, and for Mr. Khamenei to fight off the very hard-line forces that he initially allowed to stamp out reform politics altogether.

“A pro-reform resurgence in the polls will help shift dynamics on leadership succession,” says Mr. Shabani. “Conversely, their total sidelining from power once again will indicate the future [hard-line] direction of Iran under the Islamic Republic.”