Raisi’s death has ruined the Ayatollah’s succession plans

The helicopter crash that killed Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi and foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian will not fundamentally change the Islamic Republic. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the 85-year-old supreme leader, remains the constitutional commander-in-chief and is still in charge of strategic decision-making in the country. But Raisi being removed from the scene has the potential to scramble the politics of succession in Iran.

This is not the first time an Iranian president has died while in office. On August 30, 1981, president Mohammad Ali Rajai was killed alongside prime minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar and other government officials in a bombing. The current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei succeeded Rajai as president.

There have also been a series of crashes and deaths, some mysterious, of Iranian officials over the years. In 1995, Iran’s Air Force Commander Mansour Sattari and his senior aides died in a plane crash when attempting to land in Esfahan.