Iran’s power vacuum: what are the Mullahs mulling over?

Theoretically – but only theoretically – the death of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash ought not to cause any significant disruption to the Iranian regime. Despite his presidential title, Raisi was not the chief power in Iran: that remains firmly clenched, as it has been since he succeeded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, in the iron fist of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The Iranian foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, was also killed in the crash and, arguably, his demise will be more immediately disruptive for the regime. Although he was not a major figure in the Islamic nomenklatura, he was 60 years old – a mere stripling, by the standards of the Iranian theocracy – and despite having been involved in Iran’s nuclear deal in 2015, under a previous foreign minister with whom he quarrelled, when he became foreign minister in 2021 he slavishly adhered to the hardline policies dictated by Khamenei.

But the reason why his loss will be significantly disruptive is the interruption it represents to the various diplomatic démarches he had set in motion, notably with the Taliban in Afghanistan, with Saudi Arabia, with members of the Hamas politburo and with the more closely Iran-affiliated Palestinian Islamic Jihad, through its secretary general Ziad al-Nakhaleh. 

By their nature, such negotiations, in regions of complex political and ideological cross-currents, depend to an unusual degree on personal contact and cultivation of trust. Khamenei can appoint a new foreign minister, but he will have to re-plough ground previously cultivated by Amir-Abdollahian, an exercise that will cause delay, at a time when Iran urgently needs to consolidate alliances and appease potential trouble-makers.

In the longer term, however, it is President Raisi’s death that will affect Iranian domestic politics most. At the moment, it is crocodile tears time, with the UK representative on the United Nations Security Council disgracefully standing to accord a minute’s silence to the Butcher of Tehran, a title earned by Raisi’s zestful securing of death sentences on more than 3,000 political opponents in 1988 and his more recent crackdown on the 2022 street protests, after the Revolutionary Guards killed 500 people and imprisoned 22,000 in the wake of protests over the murder of a young woman for allegedly wearing her hijab incorrectly.

That sycophantic gesture put the UK’s representative in such company as Kim Jong-un and other dictators who lined up to give Raisi the “ze Führer loffed children oont dogs” treatment. It was a reflection of the Foreign Office’s chronic addiction to Middle Eastern tyrants, since pre-War days when “consummate Arabist” was the preferred euphemism for pederast. But some diplomatic attempts to console the grieving ayatollahs and whitewash the twinkling-eyed mass-murderer taken untimely from them may not have been appreciated.

Russia, recognising that a knee-jerk reaction in Iran to blame sabotage and Israel for the helicopter crash had died stillborn and that, apart from the more cretinous conspiracy theorists on TikTok, there was a realistic consensus that the crash had been a genuine accident, still attempted to gain some propagandist heft from the event. Shifting blame from Little Satan in Tel Aviv to Great Satan in Washington, Vladimir Putin’s propagandists elected to blame American sanctions for the crash.

Sergei Lavrov, the poor man’s Vyacheslav Molotov, denounced in sanctimonious terms the perils caused to civilians by US sanctions: “The Americans disown this, but the truth is that other countries against which the United States announced sanctions do not receive spare parts for American equipment, including aviation. We are talking about deliberately causing damage to ordinary citizens who use these vehicles, and when spare parts are not supplied, this is directly related to a decrease in the level of safety”.

The implication was clear: that it behoved America to imitate Russia’s scrupulous respect for the safety of ordinary citizens, as demonstrated in Ukraine, and immediately resume supplies of militarily relevant equipment to countries whose avowed objective is to destroy the United States. However, granted that this line of attack may initially have been inspired by a similar, unauthorised statement from an Iranian source as soon as it became evident the assassination theory would not fly, if that is not an inappropriate metaphor, Tehran is unlikely to have appreciated this Russian intervention.

Iran is straining every nerve to represent itself as a major regional power, as a champion of Palestinian rights, capable of raining drones and missiles upon the “Zionist entity” at will; it will hardly be thrilled to hear Russia telling the world that its helicopters – and, by extension, its military aircraft and land armour – are clapped-out death traps due to lack of spare parts.

During the three-day-long obsequies of Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian leadership and aspiring leaders will be locked in secret discussions at every level, to try to map out or discern the way ahead. Any honest analyst of Iranian affairs will admit that the secret intentions of the leadership, closeted behind the walls of mosques and other impenetrable fastnesses, are almost impossible to divine. All that can be done is to piece together, from known facts, the likely permutations of succession, for that is where Raisi’s death will have a significant impact.

The consensus of opinion was that Raisi was a likely eventual successor to Khameini. He was devoted to the desiccated principles of the Iranian revolution, ruthless in imposing the regime’s authority, and well-versed in the workings of the judiciary and all the intricacies of the regime’s apparatus of power. He belonged to the hard core of ideologues determined to preserve the Islamic Republic, in the face of popular rejection. All that made him more than acceptable to his fellow hardliners and it was widely bruited abroad that Khamenei favoured him as his successor.

But that was almost certainly not true. With his head, the Supreme Leader could see that Raisi had all the necessary attributes to succeed him; but with his heart, Khamenei hankered to pass on the leadership to his son, Mojtaba. There are several obstacles to such a move, but it is undoubtedly what Khamenei wishes to do. The first obstacle is doubt concerning Mojtaba’s religious status. Nor does he have anything like Raisi’s government experience: he holds no portfolio, but is reputed increasingly to be unofficially sharing power with his father.

Behind closed doors, jealously guarded by Khamenei’s long-serving gatekeeper Mohammad Golpayegani, Mojtaba Khamenei is believed already to be participating in the supreme leadership, despite being blanked out of news reports as if he did not exist. What first shed light on this hidden power was the US Treasury’s imposition of sanctions on him in 2019, on the grounds that his father had “delegated a part of his leadership responsibilities” to Mojtaba.

The reason for this secrecy is obvious: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is only the second Supreme Leader since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979 – in itself a testimony to the geriatric character of the theocracy. If he were to transmit the supreme power to his son, that would all be a bit – well – Pahlavi. Hereditary succession would make the regime vulnerable to the charge: “The Shah is back.”

In fact, a considerable element among the Iranian populace would welcome the return of the Shah – the real deal, Reza II, as a constitutional monarch: his eminently sane pronouncements from exile have resonated with a suppressed resistance movement that otherwise has no overall leader or political organisation, so that his portrait was carried by some demonstrators during the 2022 protests. But what nobody wants, from crypto-monarchists to fanatical Revolutionary Guards, is a Supreme Leader committed to relentless Islamic rule, but basing that rule on hereditary succession.

Ali Khamenei, the doting father, may look enviously at North Korea (making him one of the few individuals outside that hellish Marxist stockade to do so) where three generations of the Kim dynasty have presided over a state of exemplary repression, but it is unlikely that formula would translate into Iranian governance. It would be just too big a gift to rivals for the leadership: denouncing an attempt to restore the hereditary principle, even before Khameini dies, would be a powerful weapon.

On the other hand, after enjoying absolute power for 35 years, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is not accustomed to having his wishes frustrated. He also commands unlimited patronage and could fill all positions of power with people pledged to a Mojtaba succession. But considering Khamenei’s other priority is to preserve the theocracy, in the face of strongly hostile currents at home and abroad, he might reluctantly conclude that attempting to secure the succession for his son, possibly creating division among the forces committed to that cause, would add an unacceptable risk to an already menacing situation.

Yet that, in turn, invites the question: if he does not intend his son to be his successor, why is he training him as such and giving him more than a limited taste of power? Probably Khamenei himself has not finally made up his mind. In that respect, the unexpected death of Raisi could be crucial. With the most qualified alternative successor removed, Khamenei might feel Mojtaba could be a rallying point for Islamist hardliners, though everything would depend on the attitude of the Revolutionary Guards Corps.

There are, of course, other potential successors: Ali Reza Arafi, who has the qualification of being a cleric and already enjoys membership both of the Assembly of Experts and the Guardian Council, key elements of the Iranian power apparatus, is sometimes mentioned as a candidate. But what will privately be oppressing every supporter of the theocracy, from the Supreme Leader down to the lowest ranking Revolutionary Guard thug, is the future moment that is universally recognised as the ultimate stress point of the regime: Khamenei’s death.

Every Iranian longing for freedom knows that will be the one moment when it might be possible to topple the dictatorship. No plan is needed, no covert organisation, it is an acknowledged meridian: the moment the regime attempts to effect a change of leadership, the entire nation will most likely take to the streets, knowing it is their optimum opportunity. If the changeover is accompanied by controversy or internal division within the leadership, its already precarious grip on power would almost certainly be lost.

That is the elephant in the room, behind all the onion-in-handkerchief mourning for Raisi: the regime looks vulnerable as never before. Raisi provided a convenient screen for Khameini, a presumed heir who had no established right of succession but helpfully kept the spotlight off Mojtaba. What will happen now is totally unpredictable, but there is no possible permutation of recent developments that is favourable to the survival of the murderous theocracy.

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