Although the real power in this Islamic regime is not invested in elected leaders but in the ayatollahs, the demise of its political head has ignited a heated discussion that is even touching on a subject considered taboo: who will succeed Iran’s current “Supreme Leader,” the 85-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iranian president Ebrahim Raisosaldati, better known as “Raisi,” was touring northwestern Iran by helicopter last Sunday, returning from the East Azerbaijan province, where he had gone to inaugurate the Giz Galasi hydroelectric complex, when his aircraft crashed near the city of Varzaqan.
The crash also claimed the lives of eight others, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, a man very close to IRGC leader Qasem Soleimani, who has already been replaced by Ali Bagheri Kani; the governor of East Azerbaijan province, Malek Rahmati; the representative of Ayatollah Khamenei in the region, Mohammad Ali Ale-Hashem.
Messages of condolence poured in from Iranian clients, such as the terrorist organization Hezbollah, and their counterpart in Gaza, Hamas; as well as from world leaders with spotty human rights records, like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas.
Create a free account to keep reading.
