Ebrahim Raisi’s death won’t change the course of history

The Middle East never fails to surprise. Sunday was no exception. Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and several other senior Iranian politicians were killed in a helicopter crash in East Azerbaijan. One cannot help but wonder at the extraordinary misfortune not only of crashing, but of doing so in a foggy, rainy, muddy area that took rescue workers 15 hours to reach. Despite the profile of the accident’s victims, however, this is probably not an accident that changes the course of history. The Iranian presidency has become increasingly irrelevant in an increasingly-Soviet system. That trend is set to continue. 

To understand the limited power of the Iranian presidency, it serves to recap the fundamentals of the Iranian system. The Islamic Republic is not comparable to the Soviet Union, with its anonymous, grey-suited politburos. It instead resembles an imperial court (or less charitably, Nazi Germany).