Moscow and the Death of Raisi

The Iranian President and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian who were killed in the helicopter crash represented the area most open to cooperation with Russia, especially in the delivery of weapons for the war in Ukraine. Khamenei will retain control, but conflicts with Moscow over control of Syria remain in the background.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - The death of Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi came as a shock to all countries in the world, but Russian experts believe like many others that the tragic incident will not lead to significant political changes in Tehran.

The expert of the Institute of Orientalism of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Sažin recalls in an interview with Rbk that the fullness of power belongs only to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and for years ‘all branches of Iranian power, executive, judicial and legislative, have been entrusted to the radical-conservative sector of the local political establishment, of which Raisi was an expression’.

According to Sažin, the group in power is not very homogeneous and is made up of factions that fight among themselves for the levers of influence over politics, which is why ‘the president's death may destabilise the situation at the highest level to some extent’, while ruling out any possibility of revolution and coup d'état.

Another expert, Elena Suponina of the Russian Council for International Affairs, believes that reformers tending towards a more democratic and liberal turn might now try to exploit the situation by presenting their own candidates, although ‘as long as Ali Khamenei is alive, everything will remain under control’. However, the Ayatollah is not considered the most open supporter of an alliance with Russia, considering Iran's conflicts with Russia over control of Syria.

Commentators agree that the real stakes now will be the succession to the 85-year-old Khamenei, to which Raisi was the most influential candidate. New waves of mass protests are not ruled out either, while former Russian ambassador to Iran Aleksandr Marjasov believes that ‘the opposition movement is currently rather weak, only at times different strata of the population emerge, which do not coalesce... there is no centre or figure around which the protests can coalesce’.

According to several Russian observers, Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian represented the sector most open to collaboration with Russia, especially in the delivery of weapons for the war in Ukraine with the infamous Shahed drones, but their disappearance should not prelude a slowdown, let alone an end to these agreements.

If anything, Marjasov believes, ‘cooperation will expand further, because these were the Supreme Leader's indications’, and it is only a question of who will take the initiative more openly.

Russia, after all, is sponsoring Iran's entry into the SCO and Brics, and Putin was so concerned about the incident that he immediately sent two Il-76 planes with 50 rescue specialists to mountainous areas, something that did not happen for the many Russians whose lives were in danger due to the recent floods and severe emergencies in many regions of Russia. As some commentators wrote, ‘the salvation of Raisi was more important than the salvation of the Russians’.

In any case, international tensions will remain high, considering the conspiracy theories circulating on social networks, pointing to Israel's involvement in the crash of Raisi's helicopter, or those attributing to Khamenei himself the assassination of his successor to make room for his son Mojtaba.

According to Marjasov, theories about American involvement will also soon appear, considering that the Bell 212 helicopter was manufactured in the USA, but Sažin considers them insubstantial: ‘certainly the maintenance of the vehicle was problematic due to American sanctions’, but there was no need for conspiracies.

Iran's allies such as the Palestinians of Hezbollah ‘will continue to annoy Israel’, Marjasov assures, with attacks in the border regions, but without going beyond what has happened so far. Even Sažin agrees that ‘everything will remain in place, with tensions against Israel, business relations with Russia and anti-American rhetoric’.

Suponina believes, however, that a worsening of the situation in general in the Middle East is inevitable, not with explosions of violence in the short term, but in some time Raisi's death ‘will play its role’ in the destabilisation of the entire region.

Photo: Kremlin.ru/Wikimedia