Garvan Walshe is a former national and international security policy adviser to the Conservative Party
Succession is always the most vulnerable moment for a dictatorship, and even more so when the authoritarian regime possesses institutions that implement the leader’s will when he’s strong, but get manipulated by ambitious underlings when he’s weakened.
In Spain, the ageing Franco wanted to pass the baton to Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, but was thwarted by ETA assassinating him in 1973. The ensuing battle over the succession (Franco died in 1975) opened up political competition within the regime, beginning a transition to democracy completed eight years later with the defeat of the February 1981 military uprising (a more serious affair than the cartoonish image of Colonel Tejero brandishing his pistol in the Spanish parliament would suggest).
In Yugoslavia, Tito died leaving a constitutional system designed to constrain Serbia’s dominance. But, starting in the mid 1980s, Slobodan Milosevic began to amass power, adding the votes of Kosovo, Vojvodina, and eventually Montenegro to Serbia’s in Yugoslava’s federal institutions.
His pursuit of ethnic Serb dominance led to Yugoslavia’s disintegration in a civil war centred on Bosnia-Herzegovina and a later attempt to ethnically-cleanse Kosovo (we owe this particular euphemism for massacre, systematic rape and mass deportations to Milosevic’s propagandists), NATO intervention, and Milosevic’s own trial for war crimes.
Iran is run, in an unusual example of a grand title actually outlining its function, by the supreme leader, but has in theory representative institutions including an elected presidency, parliament, and “Assembly of Experts” whose membership is limited to theologians. To stop Iranians (who are thoroughly fed up with regime) from electing reformers, a Guardian Council ensures that only vetted candidates are allowed to stand for election.
It was by eliminating any serious opposition that Ebrahim Raisi, previously a judge notorious for imposing death sentences on dissidents, “won” the presidency in 2021, with the intention of preparing him to succeed Ali Khamenei as supreme leader.
The Assembly of experts has now been purged of the surprisingly numerous pro-reform religious figures: had the supreme leader died under the previous Assembly, there was a chance they would have left the office vacant, beginning the process of Iran into something more closely resembling a democracy. (Albeit one still having to contend with the Iran’s Revolutionary Guards – IRGC – a state within a state that has amassed huge economic as well as military power since 1979.)
New presidential elections have to be held in less than fifty days. They will not be in any way fair; the Guardian Council will be used to rule out any candidate who is known to want to open up the regime and has a chance of winning popular support. They do not want a repeat of Khatami’s presidency, which prosecuted torture and human rights abuses by the security forces.
Nor a re-run of Rohani’s, which pursued improvements in the relationship with the West, let alone the uprising that followed the election being rigged against Mir Hossein Moussavi in 2009; the Women, Life, Freedom uprising, combined with a deep economic crisis, make that a risk the regime cannot afford to take. Better a low-turnout election in which approved insiders face off than anything that might hand legitimacy to an opponent.
But it will be a proxy for the succession struggle to come after Khamenei dies. The next incumbent won’t be the shoo-in for supreme leader that Raisi was expected to be, but will be well-positioned to succeed him.
The main candidates the Guardian Council is expected to allow include Mohamed Qalibaf, a former mayor of Tehran, and Mojtaba Khamenei, none other than the Supreme Leader’s son. Both are well entrenched in the regime’s power structures, even if the idea of the regime that overthrew the Shah turning into a hereditary system might prove an irony too far.
Whoever ends up taking over a presidency will find himself beset by women’s rights and economic protests, subject to international sanctions, and in deep economic crisis. The president doesn’t control foreign policy, but must live with its diversion of resources of from domestic needs.
Hopes of a deal with Saudi Arabia, for an end to Sunni-Shia confrontation in exchange for a large amount of Saudi money have receded since the Gaza war; Assad is less secure in Syria now that rebellion has returned to Idlib and other provinces, and will need further support; selling weapons to Russia provides export earnings but deepens Iran’s diplomatic isolation.
The new president’s task will be to prove his ability to keep the regime stable at a time change is overdue, but this is not a job with a long shelf life to suit a man with twenty or thirty years of political life ahead of him. Anyone who, unlike Raisi, is not just a cypher for Khamnei senior needs to build his own power base.
Keeping power will demand someone who can inject new life into the regime. Getting it requires the opposite.
The post Garvan Walshe: The death of the Iranian president kicks off the real race – to be next supreme leader appeared first on Conservative Home.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Garvan Walshe
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, http://www.conservativehome.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.