Should it become clear that Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian have died in Sunday’s helicopter crash, those hoping that their sudden demise would lead to a regime change in the Islamic Republic are likely to be disappointed, experts said.
This does “nothing” for regime change, said Dr. Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian lecturer at Reichman University, as he explained that the impact would largely be domestic.
Nor did experts believe that their deaths could impact Iran’s enmity with Israel, its support of the proxy groups Hamas and Hezbollah, who are at war with Israel, or its push to produce nuclear weapons.
Things expected to remain the same
All the regional and global aggression will continue, experts maintained.
Former national security adviser Maj.-Gen. Yaakov Amidror said that, at the end of the day, it is the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who sets the country’s policies.
Raisi had denied the Holocaust, called for Israel’s destruction, and lauded Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7.
In a post on X, he wrote, “We kiss the arms of heroic Hamas [in support] and all the brave resistance groups who are the pride of the world of Islam, and we salute the stalwart determination of the resistant people of Gaza.”
Amidror explained that Raisi’s and Amirabdollahian’s replacements will use different language, but in the end, “the decision-making process is not done by the president and not by the minister of Foreign Affairs.”
Elected to the presidency in 2021, the 64-year-old Raisi was believed to be a potential successor to Khamenei.“He is a former hanging judge. He sent a lot of people to the gallows in the late 1980s,” Amidror said.
“The only thing that made him stand out” was that a number of Iranian researchers outside of the country believed that he was “a potential successor,” he explained.
Details of the crash
Should foul play have led to the crash, then it was with an eye to the succession race. Foreign powers would not have had any reason to go after him, as he was not an influential player in the country’s defense establishment, Javedanfar explained.
The crash was likely due to technical problems or bad weather, he noted.
The helicopter “was flying in a very foggy area of the Iranian border with Azerbaijan. I mean, the place… is a very mountainous, foggy area. And Iran’s fleet of helicopters is very old,” Javedanfar said.
Amidror discounted the possibility that Israel was behind the crash.
“It’s a waste of energy” to take action against Raisi, Amidror determined.
“If you want to do something that will have influence either domestically or [externally],” then one would not target the president, he added.
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