Iran President Ebrahim Raisi’s Controversial Career Ends In A Helicopter Crash

Ibrahim Moiz

Iran has suffered a serious shock after an air crash killed its ruler Ebrahim Raisi and foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the highest-ranked Iranian leaders killed in decades. The crash, which occurred on a return trip from Azerbaijan, has forced Raisi`s second-in-command Mohammad Mokhber to replace him and prepare for a snap election. It marks the end of a tumultuous but energetic reign in which Raisi and Amir-Abdollahian sought to strengthen Iran`s ties with surrounding governments while maintaining a hostile posture toward Israel and the United States.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Former Iran President Ebrahim Raisi and the site of the helicopter crash.

While shock deaths of political leaders, often via air crashes, were quite common through the twentieth century, revolutionary Iran has had more than its fair share. The year 1981, as the first Gulf war with Iraq was heating up, was particularly eventful with three consecutive months of senior deaths: in July defence minister Mostafa Chamran was killed in battle; in August president Ali Rajai and Javad Bahonar, who held the subsequently-scrapped prime minister’s post, were both assassinated allegedly by the dissident Mojahedin-e Khalgh organization; and in September an air crash killed leading military leaders – including defence minister Moussa Namjou, military commander Valiollah Falahi, airforce commander Javad Fakouri, and notable field commanders Youssef Kolahdoz and Ali Jahan-Ara.

Years after the war, army commander Sayad Shirazi was assassinated in 1999, and in early 2006 Ahmad Kazemi – founder and commander of Iran`s praetorian “Revolutionary Guard Corps” – was killed in a plane crash.

Perhaps the best-known case in recent years, of course, was the assassination by the United States of Ghassem Soleimani, the praetorian regional commander whose influence spanned, and directed Iranian policy toward, the entire region.

Raisi: a Long and Controversial Career

A senior magistrate before his long-expected victory at the 2021 election, Seyed Ebrahim Raisol-Sadati Raisi (2021-24) had been a controversial figure in Iranian politics. Born to a clerical family from the noted Shia city Mashhad, he studied law, but his exact clerical qualifications were always murky and a source of repeated conjecture. After the 1979 Iranian revolution brought in a hybrid regime – an officially democratic state far more inclusive than its monarchic predecessor, yet with enormous power invested in the clerical establishment – Raisi served as a prosecutor at several cities in turn.

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the Iranian Foreign Minister, who also died in the crash.

With the revolutionary fervour of the day inflamed further by war and its rigours, Iran`s regime assumed an emergency posture and relied inordinately on several “hanging judges” to try suspected traitors, who were accused of waging war against Allah because they undermined the “Islamic revolution”. Raisi was one of these judges, and distinguished himself with his ferocity in prosecuting opponents of the revolution, a characteristic that brought him favour with Iran`s clerical leader Rohollah Khomenei.

The 1980s Gulf war ended in summer 1988 after one final surge from the exiled Mojahedin-e-Khalgh group backed by Iraq. In its aftermath, the Iranian regime set about purging thousands of opponents, with mass executions of several thousand political prisoners across the land. These provoked the disgust of Khomenei`s heir-apparent Hossein Montazeri, who accused Raisi and a handful of other magistrates as having played a key role. Having been at Khomenei`s right hand for a decade, Montazeri resigned and was replaced with military specialist Ali Khamenei, who then went on to succeed Khomenei a few months later and has remained the eminence grise of Iran`s regime since.

A Regional Shift

Hassan Rouhani, who defeated Ebrahimi in 2017.

Over the years Raisi climbed the Iranian judicial ladder, eventually rising to its apex court and becoming first prosecutor-general and then chief justice. In the 2017 election he challenged, and lost to, incumbent Hassan Rouhani (2013-21), another military cleric who had been attempting to secure Iranian interests by a rapprochement with the United States. Khamenei and Raisi, for their part, believed that such a reconciliation would backfire. Their views hardened when American ruler Donald Trump scrapped the 2015 Vienna Accord over Iranian nuclear facilities that Rouhani had stitched together.

American and European observers often characterize Iranian politics as split between “moderates” open to rapprochement with the “West”, and “hardliners” who oppose it. This is a severe oversimplification: even the consummate “hardliner” Khamenei, for instance, was not averse to tacitly helping the United States when he felt it served Iranian interests, such as the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iran`s old enemy Iraq in 2003. A frequently labelled “hardliner”, Rouhani`s populist predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-13), would go on to castigate the 2021 election that Raisi won. Indeed, Raisi won that election against another oft-identified “hardliner”, the praetorian corps` founder Mohsen Rezai.

What distinguished Raisi`s subsequent regime from other “hardliners” such as Rezai was its focus on rapprochement with Iran`s neighbours: where Soleimani and Rezai had opted to aggressively confront countries such as Tehran`s archrival Saudi Arabia, Iran under Raisi`s rule made diplomatic outreaches to these countries. In cases such as the Taliban regime, which swept to power in Afghanistan at the same point as Raisi in late summer 2021, historical frictions were contained. China helped broker a developing reconciliation with Saudi Arabia, with the hope of weaning Riyadh off its traditional American dependency.

Key to these efforts was the clever foreign minister and career diplomat Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. Like preceding diplomats, he had the cushion of Iran`s various militias in the region to exercise as leverage, but unlike them he maintained officially correct cordial links with surrounding regimes, often covering or containing otherwise traditionally provocative actions.

As a result, Iranian diplomacy was far more effective than it had been in the late 2010s. While Tehran maintained a hostile position toward Israel and the United States, Amir-Abdollahian was careful not to bite off more than he could chew: thus when Israel, seeking to escalate its genocide on Palestine into a regional war, attacked the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Amir-Abdollahian carefully choreographed Tehran`s military response to make a point rather than take the bait.

Now What?

With Raisi and Amir-Abdollahian`s deaths, the presidency moves in an interim capacity to Mokhber until the snap election. The fact that much of the Iranian state apparatus answers, directly or otherwise, to Khamenei means that Raisi`s removal does not necessarily entail a shift in the substance of Iranian policy. The pathway to how Tehran attempts to realize its aims, however, might indeed change – which might make neighbouring regimes quite nervous.

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