The death of Iranian President Dr. Ebrahim Raisi is a reminder of the Air crash faced by General Zia ul Haq in Pakistan at the height of his power in 1988 and his mysterious demise altered many political trajectories of the country. The deceased Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was known for his dogged policies on both domestic and foreign fronts with a deeply rooted Islamic ethos.
Since he assumed power in 2021, President Rasi forged the aggressive stances of Tehran towards the West at an unprecedented level, which resulted in the most recent military escalation between Israel and Iran bringing the two countries into confrontation for the first time. The ascendency of his power in the theocratic political apparatus in Iran evolved over many decades by spending his entire youth as a protégée of Iran’s Supreme Leader Khomeini during the turbulent days of the Islamic Revolution.
Being an expert of Islamic Jurisprudence, Raisi carved out a niche for himself to become a prosecutor in Teheran, in which he was alleged for passing death sentences for many of the political prisoners in the early years after the Islamic revolution. Contrary to many critics who expected Rasi’s rule to be marred by mere seclusion, he tactfully navigated many of the entanglements in international affairs.
On the domestic front, Raisi faced a cascade of troubles one after another in his first year, starting from the Cocid-19 crisis to the mass protests that erupted across the country. However, in the second year of his rule, Raisi got into strides in securing some unprecedented successes in his geo-strategic outlook, which elevated the status of Iran to a key player in the global role.
Strategic recalibration
By emulating the “Look East” doctrine of former President Ahmadinejad, President Raisi leveraged Iran’s rapport with Asian countries. The policy under Raisi’s administration appeared more akin to a bloc formation endeavour, strategically aligning with Eastern powers like China and Russia. This is a marked shift from the long-standing pillars of Iran’s foreign policy and underscores a strategic recalibration.
His recent visit to Sri Lanka was a clear addendum to the Look East policy amid the political and geostrategic issues that encompass the region. Iran’s outreach to Sri Lanka marked by Raisi’s visit emphasized Iran’s commitment to the partnership with the Global South under Raisi’s rule and also it softly denoted Iran’s gaze over the Indian Ocean.
The address that President Raisi delivered in Colombo before a larger Muslim gathering was emblematic of Iran’s usual anti-Western rhetoric, but its appeal to the Muslim community was profound as Muslim movements in Sri Lanka organised a powerful protest against Israel within a week after the departure of Ibrahim Raisi. Despite his conspicuous projection of a hardliner, Raisi’s foreign policy contained some soft spot for negotiations with the Joe Biden administration due to the prisoners’ exchange program implemented in 2023 August, which unveiled potential possibilities for the bilateral negotiations.
The optimism on building US-Iranian negotiations reached its nadir after the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7 as many suspected the possible Iranian assistance behind the Hamas attacks regardless of Iran’s vehement rejections of such allegations. The proxy war between Iran and Israel lasted for decades finally came to open armed conflict in last April when Ebrahim Raisi launched a wave of drone and rocket attacks to Israel in retaliation.
The conspicuous vacuum ruptured after the demise of Raisi has certainly sabotaged the expectations of the hardliners in Iranian theocracy in seeing Raisi as the successor to Khamenei, who has been holding the Supreme Leadership of Iran since 1989. It was a foregone conclusion among the hardliners in Iran that Ibrahim Raisi should become the next Supreme Leader of Iran as it would safeguard the traditional ethos, which was in a perilous situation before the rising dissent from the Iranian society.
Raisi’s views echoed Khamenei’s on many of the issues. But, Raisi’s often confronted the public resistance, which was evident in the protests ignited after the death of Mahas Amini, a young woman arrested by the morality police in 2022 September. The death of Raisi in a way eases up the race for the Supreme Leadership of the country, which is a heavy blow for the hardliners. Nevertheless, there are speculations rising on the emergence of Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Khamenei as the next Supreme Leader of Iran.
Bleak circumstances
Under Iran’s Constitution, the Supreme Leader is appointed by a body of elderly experts consisting of 88 Shia clerics. The bleak circumstances arising out of the death of Raisi are likely to create internal chaos in the succession, but it may not make any decisive impact on the foreign policy of Iran or its hostile stances towards Israel.
The causes of the helicopter crash on Sunday remain unsolved and it could have been caused by foggy weather that prevailed in the Iran-Azerbaijan border region. Also, the poor aviation records in Iran in its post-revolutionary era indicate that the country has been always susceptible to fatal air crashes.
Meanwhile, conspiracy theories are on the rise speculating different theories that link to the death of Raisi as an assassination carried out by Mossad operatives. The gravity of the animosity between the two states and the number of clandestine operations on Iranian soil hint that the conspiracy theories stand above mere conjunctures. In particular, the assassinations of several Iranian nuclear scientists between 2010 and 2020 were mainly attributed to Mossad.
The chimera of power in post-revolutionary Iran is visible after the death of Ibrahim Raisi as the system that brought him to power grapples within it in search of a new leadership to bolster the theocracy.
Raisi was groomed to succeed Khamenei to become the next Supreme Leader, but the vacuum he created led to bringing Khamenei’s son Mojtaba Khamenei to the apex of power.
As of now, it is still difficult to hypothesise the political destiny of Iran in a polarised power establishment where the traditionalists and ultra-conservatives wield power.
However, what is certain is the death of Ibrahim Raisi made no stir in external affairs, which remains in the hands of Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards known as Pasdaran.
The writer is a lecturer at the Department of International Law, Faculty of Law, General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University
