In the aftermath of a helicopter crash and President Ebrahim Raisi’s death, Iran stands at a crossroads. Who will be the next president of Iran and the next Supreme Leader?

Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, together with Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and other officials and crew were killed on Sunday when their helicopter crashed during bad weather in Iran’s East Azabaijan province. While the election of Raisi’s successor is likely to produce another protest vote against the ruling government, Raisi’s death might also facilitate an early election to replace Iran’s Supreme Leader.

President Raisi was killed when returning to Tehran from the joint inauguration of a new dam in Iran’s northeast on the border with Azerbaijan. The crash has been described by Iranian officials as an accident. There has been nothing to-date to suggest foul play, despite some inevitable early conspiracy theories.

Raisi’s death will not precipitate widespread mourning by the public. A conservative cleric, who served as Attorney General during 2014-2016, he first contested the presidency in 2017 but convincingly lost to Hassan Rouhani, a reformist, who was reelected for his second term. After subsequent service as head of Iran’s Judiciary during 2019-21, Raisi stood again, this time successfully, for the presidency in 2021.

His election to the presidency was inevitable when the Guardian Council, a 12-member Islamic jurist panel with the constitutional authority to determine the eligibility of candidates, invalidated all serious alternative contestants for the presidency. Of the 12 jurists, six are appointed by the Supreme Leader, and six by the head of the Judiciary, himself an appointee of the Supreme Leader. The way the election was shaped, Raisi, clearly, was the preferred candidate of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who sought a return to conservative leadership and policies.

However, the majority of Iran’s voting public had a different view. While Raisi won the national ballot, he received the lowest voter turnout ever in the history of Iran’s presidential elections (49 percent), the lowest in the history of Tehran (26 percent), and highest number ever of informal votes nationally (13 percent).

Raisi, who had a full career in the judiciary, was always hard-line. He was a member of a judicial committee which, in 1988, was responsible for the then execution of thousands of political prisoners in Iran. That committee was never held accountable for these deaths. As president, he headed a controversial government engaged in the widespread repression of those members of the public who opposed many of his government’s policies. These included Masha Amini, who died in 2022 while in custody of the military police for “improperly” wearing her hijab. This contributed to the Women Life Freedom movement, and especially greater public opposition to the enforcement of the hijab law.

According to Amnesty International last month, Raisi’s government also oversighted an upsurge of executions in 2023 to some 853 persons, the highest number since 2015. While some of those were executed for drug-related offenses, many were executed for anti-government demonstrations and “violations of Islamic law.” Repression was, and is, certainly hard line.

Vice President Mohammad Mokhber will act as president until a new president is elected by direct public suffrage within 50 days of Raisi’s death, as required by the constitution. Who the likely candidates are for the presidency, i.e. Mokhber or others, all will again be vetted by the Guardian Council as to “suitability.” As there are no indications of any reform by the Supreme Leader, whoever is the new president, he will be conservative, and expected to continue similar policies to Raisi, both nationally and internationally. Because of this, another national protest expressed through a very low voter turnout for the presidential elections is highly likely.

Importantly, Raisi’s death also removes him as one of the two most likely major candidates to replace Ali Khamenei as Iran’s Supreme Leader. The other major candidate is Mojtaba Khamenei, the Supreme Leader’s second son. Mojtaba, aged 56, is also a conservative cleric. He served with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and remains closely connected to them. While experienced in the shadows of politics, his limited public and international exposure is seen by some as a negative.

The Supreme Leader is the most powerful political and religious person in Iran and elected by a two-thirds majority of the 88-member Assembly of Experts. Members of this Assembly are elected every eight years by the voting public, and again candidates are vetted by the Guardian Council.

Ali Khamenei is now 85 years old and reportedly suffering from prostate cancer. Iranians claim he wants his son to succeed him. He saw Raisi as his son’s principal rival, and was reluctant to step down until he thought his son had the Assembly of Experts majority required. With Raisi no longer a challenger, it is highly possible that an alternative candidate or candidates could emerge to challenge Mojtaba, and reshape the direction of Iranian politics and policies, potentially back to a reformist path. Ali Khamenei could seriously consider retiring within the foreseeable future in the expectation that his son would be elected before any other plausible candidate emerged.

But are Iranian politics that predictable?

Ian Dudgeon is a former president of AIIA’s ACT branch.

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.