The death of the president changes the power dynamics in Iran

The Economist-May 21st2024

The supreme leader’s son may be the beneficiary

Had the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, looked a touch less steely when delivering his eulogy, more Iranians might have believed the demise of his president was just an accident. Even Mr Khamenei’s officials contrasted the perfunctory manner he treated the deaths of Ebrahim Raisi and Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iran’s foreign minister, in a helicopter crash on May 19th with the supreme leader’s uncontrollable sobbing after the assassination of his top commander, Qassem Suleimani, four years ago. In a speech the following day, he devoted more time to Gaza than to the loss of Mr Raisi. The president’s death would be “easily handled,” said the interior minister at his funeral.

The rescue efforts compounded Iranians’ suspicions. First responders in the Red Crescent were stunned that rescue workers were prevented from flying in to look for the president and had to proceed on foot. Nor could they believe the delays they encountered reaching the site. Strange, too, thought many in Iran, that the two helicopters escorting the president returned safely to Tabriz. “Even under sanctions, the president’s plane is subject to rigorous checks,” says a regime insider. The initial reports of “a hard landing” and the photographs officials released turned out to be misleading. The helicopter had in fact exploded.

Mr Khamenei has every interest in downplaying this–or any other–crisis. He is old and obsessed with who will succeed him as supreme leader. Iran’s population of almost 90m are exhausted by the many and ever-more frequent shocks that disrupt their country. Since Soleimani’s assassination their currency has more than halved in value. Mass protests have erupted against the Islamic Republic’s vice squads. And the ayatollahs have launched their first direct attack against Israel since the Islamic revolution in 1979. “We just crave stability,” says an artist in the capital, Tehran. To prove his left hand is still steady at the wheel (his right was paralysed in an assassination attempt in the 1980s), Mr Khamenei swiftly named a caretaker president and a new foreign minister. Shops stayed open. Iran’s stockmarket, closed for the day, and then posted a gain. The currency briefly tumbled but then recovered “They’re showing it’s business as usual,” says a university lecturer in Tehran.

Conspiracy theories were always going to be rife. Even so, the thinly-disguised relief of some around Mr Khamenei has surprised Iranians. Of all Mr Khamenei’s five presidents, Mr Raisi was considered the most loyal. Many had tipped him to be the next supreme leader. For decades Mr Khamenei had groomed him as the yes-man at the heart of his deep state. He lacked both charisma and nous. “He has the personality of a doorknob,” says an Iranian expert on Iranian politics in exile. But for the supreme leader, Mr Raisi ticked all the boxes. He was an obedient politician, cleric and sayyid, or descendent of the Prophet. Critically, he had no son to establish a rival dynasty. He was the prosecutor and judge who sentenced thousands of the regime’s foes to death. Mr Khamenei appointed Mr Raisi to be head of his vast business empire, which oversees Iran’s largest shrine in the second city of Mashhad. He then made him head of the judiciary and finally staged-managed the sham election in 2021 that raised him to the presidency. Mr Raisi made the ideal front-man; he left the management of the country’s affairs to the bayt, Mr Khamenei’s vast household led by his son, Mojtaba. “When you went to see him, he’d talk just about whether you’d had lunch,” says an exiled Iranian who knew the former president when he managed Mr Khamenei’s conglomerate in Mashhad.

Had the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, looked a touch less steely when delivering his eulogy, more Iranians might have believed the demise of his president was just an accident. Even Mr Khamenei’s officials contrasted the perfunctory manner he treated the deaths of Ebrahim Raisi and Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Iran’s foreign minister, in a helicopter crash on May 19th with the supreme leader’s uncontrollable sobbing after the assassination of his top commander, Qassem Suleimani, four years ago. In a speech the following day, he devoted more time to Gaza than to the loss of Mr Raisi. The president’s death would be “easily handled,” said the interior minister at his funeral.

The rescue efforts compounded Iranians’ suspicions. First responders in the Red Crescent were stunned that rescue workers were prevented from flying in to look for the president and had to proceed on foot. Nor could they believe the delays they encountered reaching the site. Strange, too, thought many in Iran, that the two helicopters escorting the president returned safely to Tabriz. “Even under sanctions, the president’s plane is subject to rigorous checks,” says a regime insider. The initial reports of “a hard landing” and the photographs officials released turned out to be misleading. The helicopter had in fact exploded.

Mr Khamenei has every interest in downplaying this–or any other–crisis. He is old and obsessed with who will succeed him as supreme leader. Iran’s population of almost 90m are exhausted by the many and ever-more frequent shocks that disrupt their country. Since Soleimani’s assassination their currency has more than halved in value. Mass protests have erupted against the Islamic Republic’s vice squads. And the ayatollahs have launched their first direct attack against Israel since the Islamic revolution in 1979. “We just crave stability,” says an artist in the capital, Tehran. To prove his left hand is still steady at the wheel (his right was paralysed in an assassination attempt in the 1980s), Mr Khamenei swiftly named a caretaker president and a new foreign minister. Shops stayed open. Iran’s stockmarket, closed for the day, and then posted a gain. The currency briefly tumbled but then recovered “They’re showing it’s business as usual,” says a university lecturer in Tehran.

Conspiracy theories were always going to be rife. Even so, the thinly-disguised relief of some around Mr Khamenei has surprised Iranians. Of all Mr Khamenei’s five presidents, Mr Raisi was considered the most loyal. Many had tipped him to be the next supreme leader. For decades Mr Khamenei had groomed him as the yes-man at the heart of his deep state. He lacked both charisma and nous. “He has the personality of a doorknob,” says an Iranian expert on Iranian politics in exile. But for the supreme leader, Mr Raisi ticked all the boxes. He was an obedient politician, cleric and sayyid, or descendent of the Prophet. Critically, he had no son to establish a rival dynasty. He was the prosecutor and judge who sentenced thousands of the regime’s foes to death. Mr Khamenei appointed Mr Raisi to be head of his vast business empire, which oversees Iran’s largest shrine in the second city of Mashhad. He then made him head of the judiciary and finally staged-managed the sham election in 2021 that raised him to the presidency. Mr Raisi made the ideal front-man; he left the management of the country’s affairs to the bayt, Mr Khamenei’s vast household led by his son, Mojtaba. “When you went to see him, he’d talk just about whether you’d had lunch,” says an exiled Iranian who knew the former president when he managed Mr Khamenei’s conglomerate in Mashhad.

It did not quite go to plan. To Mojtaba, another contender for the succession, it seemed as if Mr Raisi was getting ahead of himself. Though he lacked the qualifications, Mr Raisi dubbed himself an ayatollah, one of the requirements for becoming supreme leader. (Mr Khamenei pointedly left off the title in his eulogy.) Supporters referred to his wife, a university lecturer, as first lady, a title hitherto unknown in Iran. He had the backing of his father-in-law, Ahmad Alamolhoda, the most powerful cleric in eastern Iran. Such was his confidence, he had a public showdown with Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, the long-standing speaker of parliament and a close relative of Mr Khamenei’s with business ties to the bayt. Of late, his international profile had also grown. He pushed Iran’s efforts to improve relations with its neighbours, travelling to Saudi Arabia and most recently Azerbaijan (he was killed returning from this trip). He led delegations to the un in New York and to Beijing. As they say of someone growing in stature in Persian, “he had grown a tail”.

Some in the bayt feared, too, that a powerful constellation of Mr Khamenei’s enemies within the establishment would converge around Mr Raisi. They include clerics anxious to prevent the Khameneis from turning a revolution against a monarchy into another dynasty; nationalist generals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (irgc) tired of wasting their energies on minor matters such as enforcing the wearing of the veil; and even powerful families such as the Rafsanjanis, who had lost previous power struggles with Mr Khamenei but retained much of their wealth. “The winner from Raisi’s death is Mojtaba,” says a former Iranian minister.

The regime has plenty of tools at its disposal for dealing with any instability that follows Mr Raisi’s death. Under the constitution, Iran has 50 days to hold presidential elections. A vote has been set for June 28th. But Mr Khamenei is adept at finessing the results. The Guardian Council, a monitoring body, tends to allow only his preferred candidates to stand. (In the 2021 presidential election it disqualified all but seven of the hundreds of candidates.)  Revolutionary courts deal with dissent in the religious seminaries and irgc against the regime’s increasingly autocratic bent. Possible candidates include the new caretaker president, Mohammad Mukhber, a loyal bureaucrat who has managed the bayt’s huge business empires, or Saeed Jalili, a hardline conservative and former presidential hopeful. Their record of economic mismanagement and zealotry respectively might dampen the turnout, but Mr Khamenei has seemed little bothered by the anaemic voting of recent elections. For him the theocratic power of wilayat al-faqih, or rule of the jurist, with its lack of accountability, takes precedence over elected institutions.

The Assembly of Experts, the body that selects the supreme leader, may be more amenable to Mojtaba now that Mr Raisi is no longer a member or a candidate. But Mr Khamenei’s son will still need some form of popular mandate if he hopes to overcome internal opposition to his succession. That would seem to be an uphill struggle. Most Iranians have tired of a regime that has cut them off from the global economy, eroded their savings, used its morality police to harass them, sometimes to death, and is riven with infighting. Many cheered the death of their president with emojis of clinking champagne glasses and continued to mock him in death as in life. “Exit pursued by bear,” a wag with a knowledge of Shakespeare posted online, hoping wild mountain animals would find him before the emergency teams did. Someone quickly rendered the scene in a song.