Iran’s president has died in office. Here’s what happens next

Once seen as a likely successor to Iran’s Supreme Leader, President Ebrahim Raisi has died in office, leaving the Islamic Republic’s hardline establishment facing an uncertain future.An ultraconservative president, 63-year-old Raisi was killed Sunday, along with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and other high-ranking officials, in a helicopter crash in Iran’s remote northwest. Their death comes at a delicate time for a country that faces unprecedented challenges at home and from abroad.

The Islamic Republic’s economy remains crippled by American sanctions, its young population is becoming growingly restive, and the country faces increasingly belligerent adversaries in the Middle East and beyond.

Raisi’s death will “trigger elections at a time when the IRI (Islamic Republic of Iran) is at the nadir of its legitimacy and zenith of its exclusionary policies,” Ali Vaez, Iran Project Director at the International Crisis Group think tank, Power has now been transferred to Vice President Mohammad Mokhber, who was approved as acting president on Monday by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the final arbiter of domestic and foreign affairs in the Islamic Republic. The country must now, by law, hold elections within the next 50 days.Experts say that the elections are likely to be hastily organized, with poor voter participation. In March, Iran recorded its lowest electoral turnout since the Islamic Republic’s founding in 1979, despite government efforts to rally voters ahead of the ballot.

That vote — for seats in the parliament, or Majles, and the 88-member Assembly of Experts, which is tasked with picking the Supreme Leader — brought in mostly hardline politicians.The population has by and large lost faith in the idea that change can come through the ballot box,” Trita Parsi, co-founder and Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington, DC, wrote Sunday on X.The March election also barred more moderate politicians from running — including former President Hassan Rouhani, once a regime stalwart — tightening the small circle of hardliners to continue the Supreme Leader’s conservative rule after he dies.

“Real alternatives to Iran’s hardliners have simply not been allowed to stand for office in the last few elections,” Parsi said on X, adding that “those alternatives have in the eyes of the majority of the population lost credibility anyways, due to the failure to deliver change.”

Until the Supreme Leader is replaced, however, little change is expected to follow Raisi’s death, particularly on foreign policy.

“It is really the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary Guards who make the final decisions, and even in the region mostly implement Iran’s regional policy,” Vaez said, adding that “overall we will see more continuity than change.”

Raisi’s death has raised questions about who will eventually succeed Iran’s 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the most powerful man in the country.The Iranian clerical establishment had invested heavily in Raisi during his presidency, seeing him as a potential successor to Khamenei. Observers say he had been groomed to be elevated to the Supreme Leader’s position.

The late president upheld some of the regime’s most hardline policies, quashing the 2022 mass protests that sought to challenge repressive laws, such as the compulsory hijab.According to the constitution, the 88-member Assembly of Experts picks the successor to the Supreme Leader after his death. Members of the Assembly itself are, however, pre-vetted by Iran’s Guardian Council, a powerful 12-member body charged with overseeing elections and legislation.

The Assembly of Experts has become increasingly hardline over the years. In the March vote, Raisi was re-elected to the assembly, and the Guardian Council barred Rouhani from contesting a seat.

Ebrahim Raisi’s death would create a succession crisis in Iran,” Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote on X, adding that the only other contender is likely to be the incumbent Supreme Leader’s son Mojtaba Khamanei.Allowing Mojtaba to replace his father may, however, spur theories that Raisi’s death was not accidental, Sadjadpour said.

Raisi’s rivals are also likely to try to fill the vacuum he leaves, Vaez said.

“(This) definitely throws all the plans that offices of the Supreme Leader probably had out the window,” Vaez told CNN’s Paula Newton.

He added, however, that Iran has no shortage of political actors who are “subservient and belong to the old guard of the Islamic Republic” who can replace Raisi.