Iranian President Raisi's mysterious death: media compiles 'list of suspects'

The media calls Iranian President Raisi's death "mysterious", and Time even decided to compile its own "list of suspects", reports UNN.

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Ibrahim Raisi, whose helicopter crashed in northwestern Iran on Sunday, was both Iran's president and the candidate seeking to succeed the country's elderly de facto ruler, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Both political positions carry a heightened level of risk roughly comparable to that of traveling by air inside Iran, where flight safety, undermined by decades of sanctions and uneven maintenance, has claimed the lives of nearly as many senior Iranian officials as its shadowy war with Israel. 

The cause of the crash, which also killed Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, the governor of Iran's East Azerbaijan Province and others, is under investigation, the publication notes. But any official conclusion will be open to interpretation - such as the fireworks seen on the streets of Tehran on Sunday night: were they celebrating the eve of the holiday marking the birth of Reza, known as the 8th Imam? Or the death of Raisi, the famously tough president?

Suspicions abound. The crash comes two months after Iran launched a massive missile and drone strike on Israel in response to an Israeli airstrike that killed two high-ranking Iranian generals in Syria on April 1. 

Raisi's helicopter went down in a mountainous forest near the border with Azerbaijan, which is the least friendly of Iran's neighbors - in part because it maintains relations with Israel and has a history of cooperation with the Mossad.

But the weather was also "suspicious". The Iranian state said efforts to find the crash site were hampered by fog, wind and heavy rain, and released footage of rescue crews rushing through the enveloping fog.

Finally, there is the internal politics of the Islamic Republic, known for its brutality even in the best of times, but even more so given the constant rumors that Khamenei, who has ruled for 35 years, is ill.

"Raisi's death will create a succession crisis in Iran," Karim Sadjapour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told TIME on Sunday.

He and Mojtaba Khamenei - son of the 85-year-old Supreme Leader - are the only candidates discussed for the throne. In Iran's conspiratorial political culture, few would believe that Raisi's death was accidental.

Raisi, 63, has thrived in this conspiratorial culture. The name of his political faction, the Combat Clergy Association, hints at his place in the authoritarian theocratic system that in 1979 replaced the monarchy that ruled Iran for much of the 20th century. Raisi made his career as an enforcer, serving as a prosecutor in various provinces and demonstrating his commitment to being a hardliner. In the late 1980s, he served on a "death committee" that human rights organizations say ordered the summary execution of thousands of political prisoners.

The executions disrupted the succession plan of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Shiite cleric who led the 1979 revolution after his own outraged protégé declared, "I said I will follow you anywhere, but I will not follow you to hell. " Instead, the position went to Khamenei of the same name, who was quickly promoted to ayatollah. In the decades that followed, Raisi also rose through the ranks, eventually heading the judiciary, which reports directly to the leader.

But Raisi had no clear political followers, except for regime supporters, who make up about 20 percent of Iran's 88 million people. His election as president in 2021, amid record low turnout and allegations of fraud, was seen by observers as a signal that the "system," as Iranians call the ruling apparatus, no longer views elected office as a necessary pressure valve for the majority of Iranians.