Mourners attend a burial ceremony of the late Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi in Mashhad, Iran.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Iran’s army has so far found no evidence of criminal activity in a helicopter crash that killed the country’s president Ebrahim Raisi and seven others, state media reported.

The 63-year-old died on May 19 after his helicopter went down in the country’s mountainous northwest while returning from a dam inauguration on the border with Azerbaijan.

Also Read | Death of a President: On Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi

“No bullet holes or similar impacts were observed on the helicopter wreckage,” said a preliminary report by the general staff of the armed forces published by the official IRNA news agency late Thursday.

“The helicopter caught fire after hitting an elevated area,” it said, adding that “no suspicious content was observed during the communications between the watch tower and the flight crew.”

Raisi’s helicopter had been flying on a “pre-planned route and did not leave the designated flight path” before the crash.

The report said the wreckage of the helicopter had been found by Iranian drones early on Monday but the “complexity of the area, fog and low temperature” hindered the work of search and rescue teams.

The army said “more time is needed” to investigate the crash and that it would announce more details later.

Raisi was laid to rest in his hometown of Mashhad on Thursday concluding days of funeral ceremonies in some of Iran’s major cities including the capital attended by throngs of mourners.

Among the people killed in the incident was foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian who was also buried on Thursday in the town of Shahre Ray south of the capital.

Cars drive past a billboard bearing a portrait of Iran’s late president Ebrahim Raisi, centre, his Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, second from left, and other members of his entrourage in central Tehran on May 21, 2024, as mourners in the northestern city of Tabriz attended a funeral procession for the President and seven others who were killed with him in a helicopter accident two days ago.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Being Iran’s President is not easy. The highest elected office in the country is not the most powerful one. The President is answerable to the Supreme Leader, who is appointed by a body of senior clerics. The President’s main responsibility is to run the day-to-day affairs of the country, especially its crisis-ridden, sanctions-hit economy. The President also has to run a delicate foreign policy in a hostile region where its only national state ally is Syria, which itself has been battered by years of civil war. The President has to do a lot of balancing acts at home as well, keeping the link between popular legitimacy and clerical rule alive, while also working with the security apparatus, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), to protect Tehran’s key geopolitical interests.

Also read: A brief look at the life of Ebrahim Raisi

Ebrahim Raisi, the 63-year-old hardline cleric who became Iran’s eighth President in August 2021, was doing just that, until May 19, 2024, when he was killed in a helicopter crash. In many ways, Iran’s clerical establishment found a near-perfect leader in Raisi. He was an ideologically committed loyal servant of Iran’s theocratic system. A cleric and a close confidant of the Supreme Leader, Raisi was seen as a potential successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And his death comes as a massive shock for the Islamic Republic.

Immediate priority

Iran faces three broad challenges in the wake of Raisi’s death. Tehran’s immediate priority is to put in place an orderly transition so that the “nation would not be disrupted at all”, as Mr. Khamenei has said. According to the Constitution, if the President is incapacitated, the First Vice-President would assume interim duties and fresh elections should be held in 50 days. Mr. Khamenei has already approved First Vice-President Mohammad Mokhber as acting head of the executive branch of the state. Now, it’s the responsibility of Mr. Mokhber, parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf and Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei to hold elections within the timeframe. Authorities have already announced that elections would be held on June 28.

When Raisi became President, all branches of Iran’s government — executive, judiciary and legislature — came under the control of conservatives. In the parliamentary elections held earlier this year, conservatives retained their dominance. But what worries the establishment is the dwindling turnout. For years, Iran’s clerical leadership would use high voter turnout as a marker of legitimacy for the country’s system. If the voter turnout was 85% in the 2009 presidential elections, it fell to 48% in 2021 when Raisi was elected. When the country is preparing to hold a snap election, the establishment would like to see not just the election of another conservative as President but also a high turnout.

Larger transition

Secondly, Raisi’s abrupt death did disrupt Iran’s bigger transition plans as well. Mr. Khamenei, the most powerful man in Iran, is 85 years old and ailing. He became the Supreme Leader in 1989 when Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic died. Many Iran watchers saw Raisi as an ideal candidate to succeed Mr. Khamenei. Raisi was relatively young, ideologically committed, had the blessings of the establishment and successfully negotiated between the different branches of the state and made his standing more powerful ever since his election. But now, Iran has to start from scratch to find Mr. Khamenei’s successor. Different names are being added to the list, including Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the Supreme Leader, and Alireza Arafi, an influential white-turbaned cleric who heads Friday prayers at the Qom Shia seminary.

Regional dynamics

Lastly, Raisi’s death comes at a time when regional tensions are at an all-time high. After the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, 2023, regional focus shifted to Iran’s support of non-state actors in West Asia, including Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis. Last month, Iran launched an unprecedented drone and missile attack on Israel, after its consulate in Damascus was struck and officers killed. Hezbollah, which is directly backed by Iran, is fighting a slow-burning war with Israel on its northern border. Houthis, the Yemeni militia backed by Iran, is carrying out attacks targeting vessels in the Red Sea, “in solidarity with Palestinians”.

In recent months, Iran has flexed its muscles both through its proxies and directly in the region. A change in presidency is unlikely to alter Iran’s overall security doctrine, which has been laid out by the clerical and military establishment. But for the smooth implementation of this multi-layered security strategy, which involves both state and non-state actors, in a hostile region, Iran needs a cohesive national leadership. The challenge before the Ayatollahs is to stay the political course irrespective of the disruptions.

An Iranian woman holds a poster of President Ebrahim Raisi during a mourning ceremony for him at Vali-e-Asr square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Monday, May 20, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Ebrahim Raisi, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran and a hardline cleric who many saw as a successor to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, died in a helicopter crash in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran near the Azerbaijan border on May 19.

His death, along with those of Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and a few other officials, comes after Tehran launched a sizeable missile and drone attack on Israeli territory in April that was in retaliation of an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus killed seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders.

Also Read: Iran helicopter crash LIVE Updates

A man whose lineage could be traced back to the Prophet Muhammed, Mr. Raisi rose through the ranks of Iran’s Shi’ite Muslim clergy and claimed key positions in the country’s judiciary before winning the 2021 Presidential election, which helped consolidate all power under the conservatives loyal to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Mr. Raisi’s 85-year-old mentor.

Mr. Raisi’s time as President was marked by with escalating regional tensions within the Middle East, stalled talks on the revival of a nuclear deal with world powers and the anti-government protests that swept across Iran in 2022 after the death of Mahsa Amini.

Many Iranians and human rights activists have called for an investigation into his alleged role in the mass executions of political prisoners in 1988 as a part of the four-man “Death Commissions.”

Here is a brief look at the life of Ebrahim Raisi: