The Death of an Iranian Hard-Liner

Foreign Affairs

By Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar

May 24, 2024

Ebrahim Raisi Helped Engineer the Islamic Republic’s Hawkish Turn—and Whoever Succeeds Him Won’t Change Course

The sudden death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash on May 19 marked a momentous day for the Islamic Republic. His presidency ushered in a new era for his country, characterized by increased militarization abroad and growing tumult at home. Not since the 1979 revolution had Iran’s political system faced such a fast-paced transformation. Externally, the country surprised the world with its military capabilities and its willingness to deploy them. Internally, Iran grappled with rising secularization, putting society at odds with the government. These shifts meant that the Iran that exists today is very different from the one that existed when Raisi came to power just three years ago.

Without Raisi, it may seem like Iran is headed for a period of great turbulence. Before his ascent, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, spent 30 years in near-constant conflict with Iran’s presidents, sparring over what path the country should take at home and abroad. But Raisi adopted Khamenei’s preferred, Middle East–first approach to foreign policy, expanding Iran’s regional influence and improving relations with its neighbors, including its rival, Saudi Arabia. He made sure that Iran’s presidential bureaucracy synced up with the supreme leader’s. He deepened ties with China and Russia and vastly expanded his country’s nuclear program. Raisi was so loyal to Khamenei that he was widely viewed as his heir apparent.

Yet it is unlikely that Raisi’s death will cause much tumult in Tehran. In fact, it is unlikely to prompt much change at all. Despite popular discontent and an expanding crisis of legitimacy, Iran’s powerful ruling class remains steadfast in its commitment to Raisi and Khamenei’s strategy. Iranian elites will ensure that the presidency stays in the hands of a loyal establishment conservative. They will keep the country’s policies steady. There will still be palace intrigue, as the country gears up for a snap election and ambitious politicians launch their candidacies to succeed Raisi. But Iran’s next president will almost certainly be just like its last one, and nationwide grief at Raisi’s death will ensure that the winning candidate has a smooth transition.

THICK AND THIN

Raisi’s rise to power began in the 1980s. Then a prosecutor and judge, he made a name for himself by having thousands of leftist prisoners executed. A student of Khamenei’s jurisprudence classes, he eventually advanced to become Iran’s attorney general, taking up the post in 2014. He next presided over a multibillion-dollar religious foundation in the holy city of Mashhad before being tapped in 2019 to head the judiciary.

Raisi ran to become Iran’s president in 2017, but lost to the incumbent, Hassan Rouhani. His defeat in that contest also turned into a defeat for Khamenei. Although the supreme leader controls key institutions, including the military forces, and sets Tehran’s overall policies, Iranian presidents control a vast bureaucracy and budget that give them many levers to shape, challenge, delay, or sabotage Khamenei’s programs. Iran’s presidents also derive some legitimacy from being elected directly, unlike the supreme leader. Rouhani, for example, used his power to chart a course far more moderate than that preferred by Khamenei, including pursuing a nuclear deal with the United States during his first term.

As a result, in the leadup to the 2021 election, Khamenei maneuvered to ensure that Raisi would win. Seizing on the collapse of the nuclear agreement, which was precipitated by the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the deal in 2018, the supreme leader had Iran’s Guardian Council disqualify all other serious contenders. The result was less a contest than a carefully managed coronation. With Khamenei’s blessing, Raisi won office with 62 percent of the vote—and the lowest voter turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history.

Raisi took over the executive branch when Iran was under economic siege. The Trump administration had imposed crippling sanctions in 2019. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration tried to leverage those sanctions to reach what Biden called a “longer and better” deal. But Raisi, unlike his predecessors, showed little interest in talks. Instead, he shifted Iran’s foreign policy from a westward-looking approach aimed at removing U.S. sanctions—what Khamenei derisively termed a “begging” foreign policy—to a more Middle Eastern and Asian- focused strategy aimed at neutralizing them. This policy aligned with the vision that Iran’s supreme leader had been advocating for decades.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry, for example, has traditionally been at odds with the supreme leader’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which prioritizes supporting Iran’s extensive network of nonstate proxies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. But Raisi tapped Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, a diplomat close to senior corps officials, to lead the ministry. (Amir-Abdollahian died in the helicopter crash with Raisi.) Once marginalized for being too tightly in sync with the IRGC, Amir-Abdollahian set about making sure that his ministry acted in tandem with the corps. He promoted other diplomats with ties to the IRGC and provided more support for Iran’s allied forces throughout the region

The result of this realignment was an assertive foreign policy. The IRGC, for example, was once so constrained by the Foreign Ministry that the head of the corps’ aerospace division bitterly complained about efforts by Rouhani’s officials to block missile tests. But when Raisi came to power, the IRGC began testing at will. It also began launching more outright missile attacks, such as the barrage unleashed on Israel in April after Israel bombed Iran’s embassy in Damascus. Under previous presidents, the corps might not responded with such force.

Read more on original:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/death-iranian-hard-liner