Ramifications of the Death of Iran’s (Former) President Ebrahim Raisi

May 19, 2025, was the first anniversary of the death of Ebrahim Raisi.  His death would not have mattered greatly if Raisi were merely the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI).  This article argues that the death of Ebrahim Raisi, widely believed to be Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s designated successor, has upended Iran’s succession trajectory, which will increase the elite factionalism and internal conflict in the aftermath of Ayatollah Khamenei’s death.

According to a 2023 report by Aman, the Military Intelligence of the Israel Defense Forces, the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, was preparing the path for Raisi to succeed him in this position. It adds that other Western intelligence agencies also shared that assessment.  The report further states that Khamenei not only orchestrated the 2021 presidential election to pave the path for Raisi to become president but also dismissed IRGC Gen. Ali Shamkhani (who was killed by Israel on June 13, 2025) from his position as the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council in order to increase President Raisi’s power.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was born in 1939 and is 86 years old.  The fundamentalist constitution grants extensive executive, legislative, and judicial powers to the Supreme Leader.  According to the fundamentalist constitution, the Assembly of Experts, a body of 88 fundamentalist Shia clerics, chooses the Supreme Leader.

Khamenei had invested at least 10 years in preparing the path for Raisi to assume that position. This includes not only appointing Raisi as the Head of the Judicial Branch but also manipulating the 2021 elections for the presidency and the 2024 elections for the Assembly of Experts.  Raisi was the sole candidate allowed to run for the seat from his district for the Assembly of Experts.  Raisi’s father-in-law, Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda, is a powerful hardline member of the fundamentalist oligarchy and a powerful member of the Assembly of Experts.  Finding another suitable candidate for Supreme Leader will not be easy.  Raisi checked all the boxes.

Ebrahim Raisi’s Background

Raisi was born on December 14, 1960, in the shrine city of Mashhad. Both his parents claim direct descent from the Prophet Mohammad. His father died when he was five years old. His mother is still alive. Raisi had only a sixth-grade education. Raisi then attended the Haqqani Seminary School in Qom, whose founder was Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, one of the most, if not the most, extreme right-wing theologians in the past 50 years. Ayatollah Mesbah’s students and disciples have dominated the intelligence, security, and political apparatuses of the IRI. Raisi married Jamileh Alamolhoda, the daughter of Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda. She is an outspoken extremist, hardline fundamentalist, similar to her father and husband.

What distinguished Raisi was his personality. Raisi is known as “Qazi Eadam” [Execution Judge] and “Jalad Tehran” [Butcher of Tehran]. Raisi personally ordered the executions of thousands of people, many of them teenagers whose sole crime was distributing pamphlets and had already been tried and given jail sentences.  Many Marxist political prisoners were executed merely for refusing to answer or saying “no” to the question of whether the Koran is the word of Allah (here, here, here, and here).

A man of mediocre intellect, Raisi was an empty vessel, willing to do anything and everything those above him wanted him to do. Raisi never expressed a thought or policy of his own.  He merely echoed the official versions of events. Many Iranians have argued that Raisi shares many similarities with Adolf Eichmann, which made the Persian translations of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem a top seller in Iran.

Raisi was distinguished by several personality characteristics. First, the absolute and utter lack of conscience was Raisi’s major feature. Second, Raisi consistently exhibited absolute obedience to those above him. Third, Raisi exhibited a lack of the ability to comprehend complex phenomena or understand another’s point of view. Fourth, Raisi lacked the ability to use words and sentences correctly.

The fundamentalist regime ruling Iran has been an oligarchy comprised of various factions and sub-factions promoting conflicting views on a range of policies. Khamenei has marginalized the reformist and expedient members of the fundamentalist oligarchy.  However, competition and conflicts have emerged among the hardliners and ultra-hardliners. Raisi always echoed the views of the Supreme Leader. Raisi was, in that sense, uncommon among the top members of the fundamentalist oligarchy. Raisi became the perfect vessel for various power centers in the IRI.  Raisi neither possessed a social base of his own nor the intellect to challenge those who possess power. Under Raisi’s Supreme Leadership, it was presumed that those in power would retain control.

Iran After Khamenei

Those with power in the IRI include those in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the Office of the Supreme Leader, fundamentalist-held financial conglomerates called “bonyad” [foundations], as well as several cliques.  After Khamenei’s death, in all likelihood, the IRGC will emerge as the most powerful actor, the one with guns to enforce its will.  The IRGC, however, is fragmented into various cliques.  Among the most powerful and ambitious IRGC generals are Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Mohammad Ali Aziz Jafari, Hussein Salami, and Ali Shamkhani.  Generals Salami and Shamkhani were killed by Israel on June 13, 2025.

Some of the most powerful cliques are networks organized around Mojtaba Khamenei, Hossein Taeb, Hossein Shariatmadari, Saeed Jalili, Ayatollah Mohammad Mehdi Mir-Bagheri, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Mojtaba Khamenei is the son of the Supreme Leader.  Taeb was the fearsome Head of the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization.  Shariatmadari is one of the more extremist hardline theoreticians.  Jalili is an ultra-hardliner and a member of the Council for the Expediency of the System.  He was the chief nuclear negotiator and approved candidate to run for presidency in 2013, 2021, and 2024.  Mir-Bagheri is the clerical leader of the Steadfast Front, the most extreme faction in the IRI.  Ahmadinejad continues to be popular among a segment of the population and has support among some in the security apparatuses of the regime.

If the above power centers are able to reach a consensus on a candidate, then they will compel the Assembly of Experts to select him as the next Supreme Leader. If no such candidate could be found, then, in all likelihood, a bloody struggle would ensue among them to determine which one has the power to impose its will.

In the past 10 to 15 years, Khamenei had groomed two individuals to pave the way for a smooth transition to the next Supreme Leader: Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi and Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Gen. Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike ordered by President Trump in January 2020, and Raisi died in a helicopter crash on May 19, 2024. Soleimani was to support and legitimize whoever the regime wanted to become the Supreme Leader. The propaganda of the fundamentalist regime groomed the IRGC Gen. Soleimani as a military hero above factional politics.

According to an interview posted on May 29, 2025, Oded Ailam, a former Head of the Counterterrorism Division in the Mossad, Israel’s version of the CIA, reveals that the fundamentalist regime has not been able to reach a consensus on a new person for the position of Supreme Leader.

Conclusion

It may take weeks, months, even years, for Khamenei and other powerful figures to attempt to find another suitable candidate for the position of Supreme Leader.  The regime lacks a figure like Soleimani to compel the Assembly of Experts to choose that person and then legitimize him for the social base of the fundamentalist regime.

It is during this period that the regime is highly vulnerable to collapse. If Khamenei were to die before this process is complete, there is a very high likelihood of bloody struggles among the fundamentalists. This, in turn, will create conditions conducive to mass protests by the Iranian people, the overwhelming majority of whom intensely oppose the regime.

Israel’s highly successful attacks on the fundamentalist regime’s military leaders in June 2025 have further destabilized the regime. The fundamentalist regime is very unpopular. About 75 percent of the Iranian people oppose the regime.  One of the main reasons that the regime has been able to remain in power is its ability to suppress the mass protests and coerce the population into submission.  If Israel is able to substantially weaken the IRGC, then the regime would lack the coercive ability to suppress the population.  The Iranian people may be able to overthrow the fundamentalist regime under such conditions.

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