President Ebrahim Raisi's death in a helicopter crash comes at a turbulent time in Iran’s history as the country struggles with both internal dissent and rising regional insecurity. FRANCE 24 discusses Raisi’s legacy and the impact of his sudden death with Jonathan Piron, a historian specialising in Iran.
When he came to power in August 2021, Ebrahim Raisi was widely seen as the front-runner to succeed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s octogenarian supreme leader and the real seat of power in the country. Raisi’s sudden death in a helicopter crash in northwestern Iran on Sunday raises questions about the Islamic Republic’s political future after a turbulent period that saw unprecedented displays of anti-regime discontent following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian-Kurdish woman, in September 2022.
On the international front, the region has been unsettled by the Israel-Hamas war. After an Israeli air strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus killed several Revolutionary Guards in April, Iran launched an unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel.
Supreme Leader Khamenei announced on Monday that Iran’s first vice president, Mohammad Mokhber, will serve as the country’s acting president until elections are held within 50 days in accordance with the constitution.
FRANCE 24 interviewed Jonathan Piron, a historian specialising in Iran at the Brussels-based Etopia research centre, on Raisi’s legacy as president and the likely political fallout from his death.
What does President Raisi’s death mean for Iran’s immediate political future?
Not much, since we must not forget that in Iran, the president of the republic is more like a prime minister. In fact, he's an executor. The real power lies with Iran’s supreme leader and he is still very much in place, he still controls all the levers of power. The absence of Raisi [on the political stage] is obviously a meaningful political moment for the regime, but the continuity of power will be maintained. The institutions are still in place.
The constitution foresaw this eventuality, since Article 131 stipulates that in the event of the death or incapacitation of the president, an interim government steps in and elections are called. So we are not facing institutional ambiguity or a power vacuum.
The questions that arise now are much more focused on whether there will be a change in the way policy is conducted in Iran, both domestically and internationally. So what happens now? Who will emerge as candidates for this presidential campaign – which will be a very short one, since the election is only 50 days away – given that, since the last [parliamentary] elections in March, the authorities have considerably narrowed the political circle around a hardline circle close to the ultra-conservatives?
Even within the conservative camp, there are personalities who have been discredited or sidelined. In the past, everything had been done to facilitate the ultra-conservatives' seizure of power – with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his protégé, Ebrahim Raisi, in place. Now a replacement must be found who shares these [ideological] characteristics, who reassures the regime’s hardline core.
What is the institutional role of the president?
He doesn't have much power compared to the supreme leader since it is the supreme leader who has the final say in much of the decision-making. The supreme leader has the last word on the country's strategic orientation and the president has a margin of manoeuvre that is relatively small, and which ultimately depends on his relations with the supreme leader and on his relationships with various factions as well as with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and others.
The president does have power, certainly in day-to-day decisions, particularly on budgetary issues and the economic situation. But he is also strongly constrained by all the behind-the-scenes games that exist, and by the omnipresence of the supreme leader and his hold on all the levers of power. The supreme leader also wields a great deal of influence when it comes to economic decisions, although we must remember that this is a complicated situation, since there are a whole series of other players who are very powerful when it comes to making economic decisions in Iran. The IRGC is a key industrial and economic player, but so are all the religious institutions over which it has no control.
So we can see that, in the final analysis, the room for manoeuvre is quite limited. What's more, during [former president Hassan] Rouhani's term, when he was trying to adopt moderate positions, we saw that the president faced difficulties when it came to making his own decisions and setting his own course for the future of the Islamic Republic. On the other hand, since Raisi came to power, there has been a degree of political cohesion with the ultra-conservatives, which led to cohesion in decision-making. But there was also competition between factions, which sometimes led to difficulties.
How would you sum up Raisi’s three years in power?
It may be remembered as a weak presidency. His unpopularity was flagrant. We saw this particularly in the last elections [Iran’s March 2024 parliamentary elections, which saw] the lowest voter turnout in Iran's history, and in the protests that erupted during his presidency. After the death of Mahsa Amini, Raisi faced the largest protests seen in Iran since 2009 and [former president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's fraudulent re-election.
Raisi was elected to help the so-called dispossessed, the poorest of the population. But in social and economic terms, he was a failure. He failed to turn the country's fortunes around, with an inflation rate that remains high and has exceeded 40 percent for several months. Protests erupt almost daily in Iran, with certain sections of the population demanding, for example, higher wages or the payment of pensions.
In the end, Raisi was a symbol of a growing rift between the regime and the population. He appeared as more of an executor than a decision-maker. In fact, he depended on his relationship with Khamenei. For me, the most appropriate word really is that it was a "weak" presidency ... its legitimacy, even its political legitimacy, was lacking.
In the past, there could still be a more or less open choice of who ran for public office. But now everything has been locked down, since Raisi took power, to avoid any surprises. This also reflects a certain fragility of the regime.
Following the news of Sunday’s plane crash, there were some celebratory posts on social media sites. Could this be a harbinger of unrest in the next few days?
It's hard to measure the scale of the scenes of joy – just as it’s hard to speculate about the scale of mourning highlighted by the regime. The press isn't free, so we're certainly going to see images staged to show that there's a real, mass grief, because it ultimately contributes to the regime's propaganda efforts to prove its legitimacy.
But we know that images are bound to be manipulated – on both sides. We saw some scenes of joy and fireworks, notably in Tehran. This is not insignificant, because it takes a lot of courage to risk this type of display; the regime’s repression has not let up. Now, how widespread these scenes of jubilation are across the country we cannot say, because we don't have access to credible information. We see it on social media, so sometimes the same images can be repeated from different perspectives. What's certain, however, is that Raisi was very unpopular among a large section of the population. The proof was in the low turnout for the [parliamentary] elections. These are still contested issues. He's certainly not a president who will be mourned by a majority of Iranians, that's for sure.
This article is a translation of the original in French.
