When Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash near Iran’s border with Azerbaijan on May 20, 2024, his death raised immediate questions about what this could mean for the nation, officially known as the Islamic Republic of Iran. Raisi, who served as the eighth president of Iran starting in 2021, was speculated to be a potential successor to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In his early life, Raisi was a prosecutor in Tehran and was part of a panel that oversaw the execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, per Reuters.

Soon after news of Raisi’s death was reported worldwide, Iranian officials announced that a presidential election will be held on June 28. To better understand the implications of Raisi’s death and the upcoming election, we asked SIS professor Shadi Mokhtari a few questions.

The head of Iran’s government and power structure is the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Under this structure, what does it mean to be president of Iran? What power does the president of Iran have in this system? 

The supreme leader has ultimate power within the Islamic Republic’s governmental structure, and the President’s power is, in many ways, limited and secondary to that of the Supreme Leader. In practice, the power of the president and his cabinet is also often circumscribed by Iran’s elaborate security apparatus. Nonetheless, the president appoints vice presidents and nominates ministers from a pool of candidates deemed to have requisite loyalty to the Islamic Republic, and he sends legislation to the parliament and signs legislation it passes into law. The more reform-oriented presidents Iran has had since the revolution have used those powers to challenge more hardline regime actors and institutions with some limited degree of success. Raisi was, however, much more of a figurehead president. 

President Ebrahim Raisi was seen as a potential candidate to succeed 85-year-old Supreme Leader Khamenei, according to the Associated Press. What does Raisi’s death mean for the future of the position of Supreme Leader? Is it possible another successor would bring substantial change to Iran? 

In actuality, that Raisi or anyone else is or was a potential candidate to succeed Khamenei is speculation. No one knows what, if any, plans have been made by hardliners in power about Khamenei’s successor or if there will be a successor at all. There is speculation that the Revolutionary Guard may take over and turn Iran into more of a military dictatorship, slowly shedding some of its Islamist ideology. We also do not know if the issue of succession has been decided or is the subject of fierce internal contestation. 

With the death of Raisi, Iran is now set to hold a presidential election on June 28. What control does the Supreme Leader hold over elections? How fair are elections in Iran?

Candidates for all elections have to be vetted and approved by the Council of Guardians. In practice, this means that only Islamists and those thought to be sufficiently loyal to preserving the Islamic Republic are allowed to run. It is inherently a highly undemocratic system. Still, it has in the past occasionally allowed for limited electoral contestation and choice between Islamist hardliners and Islamist reformers. In recent years, however, the Council of Guardians has really also closed the door to reformist Islamist candidates, rendering already highly flawed elections even more undemocratic. 

Raisi became president in 2021, and just a year after his election, he ordered stricter enforcement of Iran’s “hijab and chastity law.” Weeks later, Mahsa Amini died in the custody of Iran’s morality police for allegedly violating the law; her death set off massive nationwide protests. What will be Raisi’s legacy in Iran? Will his domestic policy stances outlive him?

Even before the Mahsa Amini protests, Raisi was notorious among some Iranians for being a member of the four-person commission which oversaw mass executions of thousands of jailed political prisoners in 1988. When the Mahsa Amini protests broke out, he was already a largely unpopular president seen as part of (or even used by) the system with hardliners at its helm. Most associated the state’s brutal suppression of the protests more with Khamenei and the revolutionary guard than Raisi, not because they thought any better of him, but because they did not consider him to be particularly significant.