Ebrahim Raisi (1960-2024): Death of a Conservative

WHEN IRAN’S PRESIDENT Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash on May 19, he was just a year short of completing his term. His death, while mourned by a large number of people, was also a polaris­ing affair: a number of people, especially women, in many parts of the country, also celebrated his death. This was not surprising as Raisi was closely involved in suppressing the movement for women’s freedom two years ago. Those protests were brutally suppressed and thousands of women were detained for demanding they be allowed in public without wearing a hijab. Before that, in the 1980s, he was involved in sending thou­sands of political detainees to their deaths.

His death is unlikely to affect Iran significantly, at least formally. Iran has an exceptionally stable leadership system by design. The system is fairly complex. While the president is elected directly and runs the country on a day-to-day basis, the most powerful individual is the supreme leader, the position for which Raisi was in the zone of consideration. The current supreme leader, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is 85. With Raisi gone, the two other potential candidates are Mojtaba Khamenei (55), the son of Khamenei Sr, and Alireza Arafi (67), a senior cleric. Mojtaba is an unlikely candidate as the Iranian system discourages “dynasticism”, an “evil” that has been repeatedly condemned from the time of the first Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The supreme leader is not elected directly but is ‘elected’ by the 88-member Assembly of Experts, a body which is, in turn, ‘selected’ by the 12-member Guardian Council. This track runs parallel to the direct election for the president of Iran.

Raisi was a product of this system and his career trajectory was modal, the kind traversed by most clerics who reach the top echelons of power in Iran: Birth in a clerical family; studies at a seminary as a teenager; marriage in the family of a powerful cleric; judicial appointments; and finally, elevation to senior political ranks.

What kind of political changes are likely in Iran in the wake of Raisi’s departure? This is an interesting question but one that is very difficult to answer. Since 1989, Iran has almost perfected a system whereby “liberal-reformist” presidents alternate with “conservative” ones. What this does is to take the sting out of any demands for changing the basic parameters of the political system. Raisi was a conservative clerical-judicial appointee, and it is easy to speculate that it may be the turn of a liberal to become president. But here’s the thing: these rotations between conservatives and liberals are the products of political circumstances and not the formal nature of institutions in Iran. If anything, the current external environment faced by Iran— with the Middle East being in a highly volatile and charged situation and a new Cold War between Russia and the West—may not be conducive to domestic political experimentation. It is also worth noting that under Raisi, Iran moved away from diplomatic engagement with the US and veered greatly towards Russia and China. These are not changes that can be discontinued by a mere change of president. The external and internal political situations faced by Iran remain fluid.

Iran’s relations with India, at least on paper, have remained on an even keel. In a post on X, Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned the role of President Raisi in strengthening bilateral relations between the two countries. At a recent meeting with the Pakistani leadership, Raisi was given overt hints to criticise India on Kashmir but the departed leader did not utter a word against India. India recently signed a 10-year agreement with Iran on operating the Chabahar seaport which is seen as India’s gateway to trade with Central Asia. This is even as India has pursued other maritime deals with countries in the Middle East. These are parts of India’s flexible trade diplomacy in the region. India has continued to develop its relations with Iran despite Western pressure and the threat of sanctions against Indian companies that operate in Iran. The Chabahar agreement was signed on behalf of India Ports Global Ltd (IPGL), a state-owned company.

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