Both possibilities, however, are unlikely: the former ruled out by the Iranians’ uncharacteristic but persistent denial of any foreign interference, and the latter by their fixation with regime stability and national security. And yet, while speculation on the cause of death seems inconsequential, with elections due to take place later this month, the incident highlights the ever-diminishing significance of the presidency in the Islamic Republic.

In its current form, Iran’s presidency was established in 1989 through a major revision to the Iranian constitution as part of a power-sharing agreement between Ali Khamenei and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Khamenei replaced the Islamic Republic’s founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the Supreme Leader, who was to have more of a supervisory role as the head of state. Rafsanjani became the head of government as president, overseeing a more powerful and independent executive. The intervening decades, however, saw an initial power struggle and clash of personalities between Khamenei and Rafsanjani that resulted in the increasing marginalisation of the presidency: Khamenei moved to eliminate challengers to his authority, and to concentrate power in an ever-narrowing circle of loyalists and trusted advisors. The upshot has been the mortgaging of the Revolution’s republican tenets to sustain its Islamist and revolutionary drives and ensure strategic continuity under the direction of the Supreme Leader’s office (known as the Beit).

This exclusionary process culminated in the presidency of Ebrahim Raisi, whose most defining characteristics were his mediocrity and subservience. His lack of sophistication and charisma combined with his unquestioned loyalty to the Supreme Leader allowed him to secure the top public-facing and politically sensitive positions in the Islamic Republic, such as the Head of the Judiciary, prior to his tenure as president. Raisi appealed to Khamenei and his Beit precisely because he was the perfect LARPer, compliant enough to be included in the circle of trust and play the roles delegated to him, but one who was neither effective nor charismatic enough to eventually muster a popular (or even populist) challenge to the Supreme Leader’s authority as previous presidents had done. Raisi’s deficiencies, combined with his lack of a genuine public base, also made him palatable to the rest of the Establishment — as he was never a serious contender to become Khamenei’s eventual successor. Finding a similarly pliable yet consensual replacement might not be as straightforward.

It will entail a new game of electoral musical chairs carefully orchestrated by the Beit and the closely aligned Guardian Council. Although the Islamic Republic is not monolithic, state policy is decided by the Supreme Leader through consensus-building among informal power brokers, including the IRGC, hyper-revolutionary reactionaries, pragmatic Islamo-technocrats, parastatal economic foundations known as the bonyads, and ultra-conservative clerics and seminarians. The caveat behind the largely successful consolidation of power around an informal group of insiders is the disempowerment of Iran’s formal government institutions.

Indeed, Khamenei’s first public message in the early hours of the crash that the country’s affairs would continue “without disruption” was more than mere rhetoric: it signalled the weakening and decentring of the presidency itself. The Iranian president is effectively reduced to being the regime’s chief operating officer at best and its public spokesman at worst, with key decisions on both personnel and policy being made elsewhere. Raisi’s presidential tenure was punctuated by public gaffes and meme-worthy episodes that provided a comedic foil to his lack of fitness and executive experience, making a mockery of the office. In one such clip that went viral, Raisi is seen responding to public grievances about economic hardships faced by the working class by aloofly asking them if they had been given lunch, which made for a stream of jokes that in the wake of his crash Raisi himself had become lunch for the bears.

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By Edward Luttwak

There is a lot of commotion and speculation inside Iran regarding the identity of the country’s next president, partly owing to public intrigue about the balance of power and further fuelled by a state media looking to boost voter participation from the record-low turnout of the legislative elections in March. Of the 80 people registered to run in the special election on 28 June, only six were approved by the Guardian Council. Former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was perhaps the most high-profile candidate to be deemed unfit by the Council. Similarly rejected was Ali Larijani, the former speaker of the Iranian Parliament (the Majles) and JCPOA supporter who was expected to be a strong candidate uniting moderate conservatives with pragmatists close to former President Hassan Rouhani.

The final list of presidential candidates includes several contenders from the different wings of the conservative Principlist camp along with one reformist. Among the Principlists vying for the country’s number two position is Saeed Jalili — the notorious ideologue and former chief nuclear negotiator in the Ahmadinejad era who is strongly backed by the regime’s most extremist, ideological, and autarkistic faction. The reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian—former Minister of Health in the administration of Iran’s popular former president Mohammad Khatami and current representative from Tabriz — has found early momentum and could be the dark horse. An ethnic Azeri and officially backed by the reformists, he is a relatively surprising inclusion likely approved to entice more people to vote, especially in northwest Azari region of Iran. His chances hinge on whether he can get the disaffected Iranian urban middle class that has largely boycotted recent elections to return to the polls, a tall order in the wake of the Mahsa Amini protests.

When the news of Raisi’s death first broke, initial expectations were that the current interim president Mohammad Mokhber — a close confidant of the Supreme Leader and formerly in charge of his finances and the major bonyads linked to him — would be Khamenei’s preferred choice for the role. Yet Mokhber’s unexpected decision not to run after overnight consultations with the current head of the Majles and former Tehran Mayor Ali Ghalibaf, and the latter’s U-turn to announce his candidacy on the last day of registrations, strongly suggest that Ghalibaf — who has the better name recognition — may have emerged as the Beit’s preferred candidate. A former IRGC commander, Ghalibaf not only boasts strong links with the country’s security apparatus but also embodies the regime’s pragmatic instincts. Despite his reputation for corruption and lavish spending, when all is said and done, Ghalibaf may be the candidate around whom many in the establishment could coalesce.

In practice, the upcoming election will be mostly performative, a highly propagandised and theatrical affair orchestrated by the Beit and its chief of staff Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani. Regardless of who becomes the next president, he — like Raisi — will owe his position to the Supreme Leader and his Beit and be expected to stick to Khamenei’s line. Iran’s true game of thrones will only commence after Khamenei’s eventual demise and the genuine succession crisis it may trigger. Still, a presidency often reflects the personality of its occupant. Given the Principlist establishment’s — and Khamenei’s own — apprehensions about a potentially “deviant” or non-revolutionary successor who could weaponise the power of the presidency to finally bring about the revolution’s Thermidorean moment and radically transform the Islamic Republic, the nation’s executive branch looks set to be helmed by obsequious foot soldiers and mediocre yes-men for the foreseeable future.

The systematic, if pre-emptive, purging or banishment of influential figures, especially former presidents, who dared to defy Khamenei’s will (even if only occasionally and privately) was meant to foreclose the possibility of future deviancy or fundamental transformation. It is why reformists close to Khatami (who the conservatives disparagingly call the liberal mullah) are almost entirely cut off from power, and why Ahmadinejad’s rejection was a foregone conclusion. The establishment’s paranoia about change and obsession with purity has radicalised the system, particularly its next generation, many of whom are alumni of Imam Sadegh University and see themselves as the true heirs of the Revolution. Ironically, the hardliners associated with this faction (sometimes labelled Paydari) are devotees of Jalili and regard the older generation and especially the more pragmatic among them like Ghalibaf (who has called for a “new Principlism”) as too modern, materialistic, corrupt, and non-revolutionary. Indeed, the one interesting rivalry to watch for in the upcoming election could be the showdown between Ghalibaf’s Islamo-technocratic supporters and the ultra-revolutionaries rallying behind Jalili to get a sense of the two camps’ appeal and relative clout within the Islamic Republic’s rank-and-file.

In many ways, the Bell 212 helicopter tasked with Raisi’s transport represents the state of the Iranian presidency: it has become little more than an empty shell reduced to a quasi-functional and semi-ceremonial role. But it’s an even better metaphor for the Islamic Republic itself: another relic of the Seventies that is simultaneously modern and archaic and whose external metallic frame and complex machinery hide its internal corrosions and outdated instruments.

Some might even say that there is a degree of poetic justice in the chopper’s crash being caused not by nefarious machinations from the outside but by the natural elements, its own ageing equipment, and its inability to adapt to real-world conditions. Considering the severe mismanagement in the run-up to the crash, the botched emergency response, and its media fallout, the event revealed what has become a near truism of Persian history: that given time, Iranians are ultimately their own worst enemies. Consider, for instance, that the CIA had actually botched its planned 1953 Coup against Iran’s then-prime minister Dr Mohammad Mossadegh, and that his downfall occurred only days later in a cascade of events whose major protagonists were the Iranians themselves — mainly due to an unholy alliance of Iranian royalists, bazaar merchants, mobsters, and clergymen like Ayatollahs Kashani and Behbahani (who had turned against Mossadegh for his secularism), coupled with Mossadegh’s own intransigence, overconfidence, and underestimation of his enemies. Not to mention how Tehran was so paranoid about a potential US military response in the aftermath of its 2021 retaliatory strikes on America’s Al-Asad airbase in Iraq that it mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian passenger airliner killing all on board to international and domestic outrage.

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The crash symbolises yet again that, despite looking formidable from the outside and displaying a particular nous for navigating geopolitical crises as most recently displayed during its latest tit-for-tat with Israel, the Islamic Republic is far less robust and judicious internally. Indeed, Raisi’s death underscores the fact that Tehran is at its most vulnerable when left to its own devices and not actively provoked by its foreign strategic competitors, leaving it unable to use the spectre of international conflict to rally its forces behind its flag.

For all its faults and strategic missteps, the Biden administration has at least shown the foresight to engage with the Iranians at critical junctures to prevent escalation and reach a mutual understanding on regional security as evidenced by a series of third-party talks in Oman. Whether a new Trump administration would display similar restraint and play the long game by pursuing an interest-based and transactional relationship with Tehran is an open question. (During his first term, Trump was repeatedly attacked for his supposedly transactional approach to foreign policy, but his Iran policy, largely left to the Neocons, was especially provocative, hawkish and ideological.)

Still, Bell 212’s crucial lesson for the outside world is to exercise strategic patience in dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran — for ultimately all revolutions devour themselves and implode under the weight of their own shortcomings and contradictions. Considering how eight years of the Western-backed Iran-Iraq War and decades’ worth of international sanctions actually strengthened the IRGC and undermined the Iranian people, we must learn that foreign interference, provocation and war will only delay — not quicken — that eventuality.

I have met men who still long for their wives, when the separation has been longer than the marriage. I have met old Bolsheviks who kept rehearsing Trotsky’s actions after Stalin’s death, believing the Soviet Union would still be with us, and thriving if only he had returned two days earlier to Moscow. I have even met New Labour believers who think that if David Miliband had defeated his brother, then Brexit would never have happened and Labour would be in power, at the vanguard of a renewed EU.

When I listen to such claims, an old Yiddish phrase comes to mind, which is translated as: “If Grandma had wheels she’d be a trolly”. The conversation always ends in a kind of faraway silence. I find it hard to know what to say, while the person thinks about what to do next; whether to send a birthday card, write a letter to the Morning Star, renew their efforts to support Keir Starmer.

Sometimes the ship has sailed and it is never coming back to port. It has a new crew and a new cargo, a new trading route and a new flag. Yet they still believe that, someday, their ship will return; they stand at the dock, staring out to sea but always walk back home alone.

Sometimes things change, an era changes, and there is no going back. For institutions, for nations, as well as for people, this is hard to accept. For Britain and the United States, the Iranian Revolution is such a phenomenon. It was all going so well, and it is hard to accept that it will never go well again.

Muhammad Ali said that the first rule of boxing is that you never get knocked out by a punch you see coming. It is also the first rule of politics. And no-one predicted the form of the the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

Both London and Washington did predict an imminent threat to the rule of the Shah, but from the Left, through a coalition between disaffected workers and intellectuals supported by the Soviet Union and led, within Iran, by the Tudeh Party. That is not what happened.

The spectre of Mohammad Mossadegh and the 1953 coup, orchestrated by the CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, held them in its thrall. Mossadegh was an aristocratic liberal nationalist who wanted to nationalise Iranian oil. At the time, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the predecessor of BP, held a monopoly of oil production in Iran and signed a deal which only gave 19% to Iranians. It was effectively a nationalised industry and the profits were vital to post-war reconstruction. The NHS was founded on the assumption of continued revenue streams from Iran.

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The Labour Government of 1945 was extremely opposed to to Iranian nationalisation, while pursuing it vigorously at home. Colonial double standards. Ernest Bevin, Herbert Morrison and Clement Attlee all took a hostile view of Mossadegh and supported the Shah as the instrument of maintaining the status quo. Eisenhower agreed and Kermit and his muppet show was unleashed; Mossadegh was deposed and condemned to a life of internal exile.

That is the lost moment of Iranian history, the great “what if?” What if we had supported Mossadegh rather than depose him? What if Iran had grown into a liberal democracy?

This is the question that haunts the minds of our diplomats because what happened was completely different: an Iranian Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini and the imposition of an eternal form of clerical domination, “the rule of the jurists” — and there’s no way out.

The coming Iranian presidential elections on Friday indicate and express the doomed eternity of stasis that the revolution created. The inevitable winner will be Ebrahim Raisi, a mass-murdering apparatchik who was part of the four-man team responsible for the public executions of up to 30,000 Leftists in a few months in 1988 for the crimes of atheism and apostasy.

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Roger Scruton still gives me strength

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He will be elected on a turnout of less than 30%. Most Iranians understand that the power lies not with the President, but in the office of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, which controls the Revolutionary Guard, the media channels, the clerics and foreign policy.

In other words, there is a double system. These elections are for a government that will pretend to govern while the real power lies elsewhere. Just look at the country’s vaccine programme, which has inoculated only 2% of the population. The Health Ministry fully participated in Covax to receive vaccines, and yet Khamenei announced a ban on both British and American jabs on the grounds that they were “likely designed to contaminate foreign nations”, leaving the Chinese vaccine and Sputnik as the only options. One is useless and the other is scarce.

The office of the Supreme Leader also vets who can stand for office, and they rejected all candidates from outside the revolutionary vanguard. The former reforming President, Mohammad Khatami, set up an “Association of Combatant Clerics” and put forward fourteen candidates, but each was rejected.

Iranian foreign policy is based on building proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the militias in Iraq, Hamas in Palestine, the Houthis in Yemen. And it’s the same at home. These elections are just proxy politics, the candidates represent the regime, not the people.

I sat through the first three-hour debate between the approved candidates. They were not allowed to discuss Covid, vaccines, sanctions, power cuts, sinking ships or burning factories. It reminded me of Brezhnev-era Soviet plenaries, where all the candidates agreed that the achievements of the Revolution were eternal, but the enemies of socialism were still sabotaging the project, particularly the Government.

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This time, it’s the unprecedented form of Shia theocracy invented by Khomeini that must be preserved. When I was in Najaf in 2018, the historic home of Shia religious authority, I met with two senior ayatollahs and many clerics, all of whom rejected the Iranian system as hostile to the teaching and practices of the Shia Muslim faith. In Iraq, a year later, I witnessed the assassinations of protestors by Iranian-backed militias. Tens of thousands of Shia protestors in Baghdad sang “Iran Iran, go away” every night. They are still there; still shooting them.

At that time in November 2019 demonstrations against the regime exploded all over Iran, so the Government turned off the internet and shot the protestors. Any remaining political prisoners were recently transferred to the violent offenders section of the prison. They won’t last long.

And yet Western diplomats still believe that it is possible to negotiate with the government, to normalise relationships, to go back to 1953 and do the right thing this time. The first foreign policy act of the Biden Presidency was to re-engage with Iran and revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, lifting sanctions on proxies and renewing the distinction between hardliners and “moderates”. This is not a distinction that is believed in by the Iranian people as reflected in the overwhelming majority who will boycott the election. The Biden approach still assumes that they are negotiating with Mossadegh when the truth is otherwise.

The Iranian Left have been utterly routed and the middle class lurk in North Tehran, playing cat and mouse with the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, over how much hair women can show in public. And yet the yearning of Iranians for something better and different cannot be stilled. It remains a crime in Iran to speak to others about Jesus or to claim that you have a relationship with him. And yet, the number of Christians there is now estimated to be close to a million.

There is a network of underground churches. Bibles are smuggled in and passed from hand to hand. The numbers continue to grow. It seems that for thousands of Iranians the only way to get rid of this regime is to change your religion. That is the long story in Iran. The desert church is lighting its candles for the prince of light once more.