Iran’s President Raisi has died in a helicopter crash, state media confirm

Israel’s war against Hamas and the subsequent humanitarian disaster that has unfolded in Gaza over the past seven months have inflamed global opinion and raised tensions across the Middle East.

It has also brought to light a decades-long shadow war between Iran and Israel.

Last month, Iran launched an unprecedented drone and missile attack on Israel – its first direct attack on the country – in response to an apparently deadly Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus that killed a top commander in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). became.

According to U.S. officials, Israel retaliated a week later, hitting targets outside the Iranian city of Isfahan in a much smaller, calibrated response.

Since then, direct conflict between the two has stopped. But the proxy war continues as Iranian-backed militias such as Hamas and Hezbollah continue to fight Israeli forces.

Meanwhile, Iran’s hardline leadership has weathered a recent explosion of popular discontent on the streets at home, hit hard by years of U.S. sanctions.

Following the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s notorious morality police in 2022, the country was rocked by youth-led demonstrations against clerical rule and worsening economic conditions.

Since then, Iranian authorities have launched an ever-increasing crackdown on dissent in response to the protests.

According to a United Nations report published in March, this crackdown has led to human rights violations, some of which constitute “crimes against humanity.”

And although protests have largely stopped, opposition to the clerical leadership remains deeply rooted among many Iranians, especially young people who long for reform, jobs and a break from oppressive religious rule.

Raisi, a former hardline justice chief with his own brutal human rights record, was elected president in 2021 in a vote heavily manipulated by the Islamic Republic’s political elite so that he would run virtually unchallenged.

Raisi defeated a more moderate candidate and his victory was seen as signaling the start of a new harder-line era in Iran. Nevertheless, voter turnout in this election was only 41 percent, a record low.

The Iranian president’s powers will ultimately be dwarfed by those of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who is the supreme arbiter of internal and external affairs in the Islamic Republic.

With Raisi dead, it is likely that new elections will have to be held.

Iran’s constitution stipulates that the vice president – currently Mohammad Mokhbar – will take over as interim president and that new presidential elections will be held within 50 days.

This means that Iran’s clerical establishment, with Khamenei at its helm, must now find a new leader to support amid intense regional insecurity and domestic discontent.