What happens in the event of Raisi’s death? An Iran expert weighs in

A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi crashed into a foggy forest in Iran’s eastern Azerbaizin province on Sunday.

Speculation mounted about what would happen in the case of Raisi’s death and what it would mean for Iran’s internal politics, as multiple emergency workers launched search and rescue operations.

Fox News Digital spoke with Benam Ben Taleburu, an Iranian security expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), about the impact on Iran’s domestic politics.

The helicopter crash came after years of growing street protests against the regime and a sharp decline in election participation, Tabul said.

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“Mr. Raisi was a symbol of the hard-line shift to the right of the remnants of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ruling elite,” Taleburu said. “This represents something of a second generation, where loyalty and enthusiasm, rather than ability or competence, were important factors in his political rise.”

Taleburu pointed out that Raisi was involved in mass executions of prisoners in the late 1980s and has been bleeding for decades.

Raisi, now 63, previously served as Iran’s attorney general. He ran unsuccessfully in the 2017 presidential election against Hassan Rouhani, a relatively moderate cleric who signed Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2015.

In 2021, Raisi was elected as Iran’s president in an election in which all potential opponents were barred from running under Iran’s vetting system. He received nearly 62% of the 28.9 million votes cast, the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history. Millions of people stayed home and some invalidated their ballots.

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Although Raisi is in a theoretically powerful position, he “doesn’t have an organic social support base in the country,” Tabur said. “He is truly a vehicle for the strengthening of the ultra-far right in Iranian Islamic politics.”

Raisi has long been considered a protégé of Iran’s supreme leader and a potential successor to his position in the country’s Shiite theocracy. But if Raisi were to be left out, “the shortlist would have been even shorter,” Taburu said.

“Another person on this list of candidates who will benefit greatly from this is Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, who is currently exercising power with basically no accountability. And many claim that he is interested or could become the next Supreme Leader.”Taburu he said.

Iran will ultimately be run by 85-year-old supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei. But as president, Raisi supported enriching the country’s uranium to near-weapon-grade levels as part of a standoff with the West, which also hindered international inspectors.

Raisi also said more than 300 drones and missiles were directed toward Syria in April in response to an alleged Israeli attack that killed Iranian generals on the grounds of the country’s embassy in Damascus. supported attacking Israel with a large-scale attack launched by the United States. That in itself was an expansion of a long-standing shadow. War between two countries.

Protests in Iran continue, sparked by the death of 22-year-old Martha Amini, who was detained for disobeying rules on wearing a headscarf. (Hakan Akgun/dia image via Getty Images)

He also supported the country’s security authorities in suppressing all forms of opposition, including the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 and the nationwide protests that followed.

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More than 500 people have been killed and more than 22,000 detained in a months-long security crackdown. In March, a United Nations commission of inquiry found Iran responsible for the “physical violence” that led to the death of Amini, who was arrested for not wearing a hijab (scarf) in accordance with authorities’ preferences.