Iranians will head the polls for the third time this year on June 28 to choose a replacement for President Ebrahim Raisi, who died Sunday when his helicopter crashed in a mountainous area of northwest Iran.
Judging from the historically low turnout in two prior elections this year for parliament and a body called the Assembly of Experts, participation is likely to be anemic. In 45 years of reporting on Iran, I’ve never seen the Iranian people so demoralized and so utterly disconnected from Iran’s political leaders.
That’s because real change is unlikely before the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 85, the chief cleric who has led the theocratic state since a decade after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Khamenei has steadily tightened the noose on political activity to the point that only the hardest of hard-liners can hold power.
Raisi was one of those, an apparatchik who in the 1980s signed off on the summary execution of 5,000 political prisoners, and implemented draconian policies as the head of Iran’s judiciary. His presidency will be remembered chiefly for a miserable economic record and a vicious crackdown on widespread protests in 2022 and 2023 over the brutal enforcement by Iran’s “morality police” of strict dress codes for women.
And yet, Raisi’s death could be an inflection point. Given the enormous popular discontent in Iran and uncertainty now even among the regime’s base, a window may be opening to influence what comes next.
The U.S. should take advantage of this fragility, not to destabilize the country further, but to promote constructive solutions to a host of problems. The Biden administration should seize the moment to press initiatives to de-escalate regional tensions, to end the war in Gaza and to dissuade Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state.
The U.S. has been struggling for months to achieve the release of the remaining hostages seized by Hamas in its brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel, along with a cease-fire in Gaza and the ramp-up of humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians at risk of starvation. It is in Iran’s interest, too, to end this war, which in April led to direct clashes between Iran and Israel that could have burst into full-scale war.
Iran has substantial influence over Hamas and even more sway with Hezbollah, which has exchanged fire repeatedly with Israel from its bases in Lebanon since last October. While the Biden administration and other Israeli allies pressure Israel to wind down its retaliation against Hamas in Gaza, Iran should be pushing Hamas to accept a cease-fire deal.
On the nuclear issue, Iran recently invited Rafael Grossi, director general of the United Nations’ top nuclear agency, to discuss a number of disputes, including some that date back decades. The Biden administration should support the International Atomic Energy Agency’s calls for Iran to increase transparency over its nuclear activities as a path to resolve those disputes.
The IAEA lost full visibility into Iran’s nuclear program because of the Trump administration’s disastrous decision to exit the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, an international agreement that was painstakingly negotiated over years by the U.S., European powers, Russia and China – which put verifiable curbs on Iran’s nuclear advancements in return for sanctions relief.
Among other things, international nuclear inspectors need renewed access to centrifuge workshops and facilities for producing uranium ore concentrate and the reinstallation of surveillance cameras and regular access to data from Iranian facilities.
With an IAEA Board of Governors’ meeting coming up in Vienna in June, this is an opportunity for Iran to bring its program back into compliance and to take steps to address international concerns that it is inching toward building nuclear weapons.
The crash that killed Raisi also took the life of Iran’s Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian. His acting replacement is Ali Bagheri Kani, an experienced diplomat who has been Iran’s top nuclear negotiator. U.S. Middle East envoy Brett McGurk has exchanged messages with Kani through intermediaries in Oman, and should step up those contacts now to push for de-escalation of regional conflicts and a resolution of the nuclear file.
Khamenei, for all his rejectionism, has proven over the past 35 years that he is more opportunist than adventurer. He profited from the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, to seed the region with new members of a so-called Axis of Resistance. And he took advantage of then-President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal and Israeli attacks on the Iranian nuclear program by ramping up uranium enrichment.
If there is one bright spot, it is that Iran has managed at least a reconciliation with its chief Arab rival, Saudi Arabia, and even in the darkest times, Tehran has kept channels open to Washington.
Given the instability at home with Raisi’s death and deep-seated discontent among the public, it would be foolhardy for Iran to raise regional tensions further. That is the slimmest of silver linings in an otherwise dark and ominous sky.
