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Iranians React To Raisi Death: Mourning, Cheering, Succession Whispers, Israel's Role

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PARIS - The death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash was greeted in Iran, and across Persian-language media, with extreme reactions on both sides. And then there was the “Israel question.”

The IRNA state news agency called Raisi "the martyr of the Republic" in its report on reactions to the crash that happened as the president returned late Sunday from a meeting with his counterpart in neighboring Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliev. Tehran daily Hamshahri used “martyr” to describe both Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian who was also killed alongside several others in the crash that had no survivors.

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Speaking to IRNA, the head of the Martyrs Foundation, a state economic body, Hossein Qasemzadeh-Hashemi, says "martyrdom is a prize God gives to excellent pupils" and Raisi had achieved this prize like the Revolutionary Guards General, Qasem Soleimani, who was killed January 3, 2020 in a U.S. targeted air strike near Baghdad.

The city council in the northeast city of Mashhad will name one of the local squares or main streets after Raisi.

Instead, from non-government sources, isolated incidents were reported Monday of ordinary Iranians publicly celebrating the death of the 63-year-old president, his passing seen as a possible boost to movements inside and outside Iran who oppose the clerico-revolutionary regime that has been in power since 1979. Raisi, a hardliner loyal to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and elected in a low-turnout election in 2021, was also seen as a possible successor to Khamenei.


Cries and prayers in government-run outlets


Left: Front page of Al-Vefagh, produced by Islamic Republic News Agency, IRNA.
Right: Front page of Iran, the official daily newspaper of the government of Iran. Both show Iranians praying for President Ebrahim Raisi after the crash.

Discreet celebrations across Iran


Raisi's succession: Who? When? How?


For now, the vice-president, Muhammad Mokhber, is expected to head a presidential committee of senior officials and will serve as provisional head of the Executive. Mokhber has a decades-long record of running big business foundations directly under Khamenei's authority. Ali Baqeri, a deputy-foreign minister, became the country's acting foreign minister.

Raisi's own election in 2021 was anything but a resounding popular mandate.

Elections for a new president might be held in July this year, according to the Reuters news agency. A spokesman for the Guardian Council, a constitutional watchdog body, said these could happen "this year."

This might be the first inconvenience caused by Raisi's sudden death: namely forcing the regime to hold an election when Iranians are likely to widely boycott them again, and every poll has become a sham and an embarrassment to a regime that has barely managed to juggle the two roles of government of the masses, and theocracy.

Recent parliamentary elections were largely ignored, and Raisi's own election in 2021 was anything but a resounding popular mandate.

As always with Iran, or perhaps any dictatorial regime with opaque practices, people must have wondered if this really was an accident or a whodunnit?

Ham-Mihan front page


Tehran-based newspaper Ham-Mihan dedicates its front page to the deadly helicopter crash of Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian near the Azerbaijan border.

Israel's involvement?


While Raisi was getting bogged down with the bread-and-butter business of government and economic management, he was also cited in prior years as a possible candidate to become, in time, supreme leader.

So did someone inside Iran want him out of the way? Could this possibly have been a dirty trick by one of his top rivals, including Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Lebanese Hezbollah, and Khamenei's own son, Mujtaba Khamenei.

Others floated the scenario that the crash was Israel's work, perhaps with the aid of the Republic of Azerbaijan, which has working ties with the Jewish state?

An Israeli official rejected any involvement at the same time that Iran’s police chief Ahmad Reza Radan said talk of Raisi being targeted was a false rumor spread by Israel "which as an enemy can do nothing but show its enmity."

With Raisi’s death, one opposition commentator quipped there’s one less torturer in the world, though another exiled dissident noted that he will escape judgment in an international tribunal. Other Iranians, both inside and outside the country, return to the idea that when unpopular official in the Islamic Republic dies, there is always someone worse to take his place.


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