The sudden deaths of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian in a helicopter crash have plunged Tehran into instability. Raisi was not only the head of Iran’s government but was also seen as a leading candidate to replace aging Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Amid a struggling domestic economy, popular protests, and a shadow war with Israel, how will Iran respond to the loss of its hard-line leader? What will Tehran’s next steps mean for the broader Middle East?
FP’s Ravi Agrawal put these questions to Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Robin Wright, a contributing writer for the New Yorker and distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Video clips from this event
-
Journalist Robin Wright looks back at the legacy of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, as “belligerent,” “unpopular,” and an “absolutist ideologue.”
-
The death of President Ebrahim Raisi leaves a vacuum in Iranian leadership. Iran scholar Karim Sadjadpour tells Ravi the likeliest political outcomes.
-
Karim Sadjadpour says he can’t think of a single country with a larger “gap between the aspirations of its people and the aspirations of its regime.” But he cautions that few Iranians see reform as a likely outcome of the upcoming June elections.
-
Robin Wright says that even with a new government in Iran, its foreign policy will continue to operate according to anti-American and anti-West attitudes.
-
Iran’s Axis of Resistance was built because it feels strategically lonely in the region, says Robin Wright. But she explains that most Iranians would prefer those resources be spent at home.
