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That's Iranian State Television confirming today that President Ibrahim Raisi has died.
MA. Raisi was traveling in a helicopter with eight others, including Iran's foreign minister, from the country's border with Azerbaijan. All on board were killed.
The crash happened in the early afternoon local time on Sunday. According to Iranian State TV.
It was in northwestern Iran, and the weather conditions hampered rescue efforts for hours.
This was a very mountainous, remote region. The fog limited visibility to about five yards. I mean, just absolute pea soup.
That's Bloomberg's National security editor Nick Wadhams.
And then you have this fact that the Iranian economy has been under US and Western sanctions for so many years. That makes it very differfficult for them to get to buy new helicopters to get spare parts.
The helicopter that Rayisi flew in was a US manufactured Bell two one two, a model that first entered service in nineteen sixty eight and stopped being made in nineteen ninety eight.
I lived in Russia for three years in the two thousands, we were constantly writing stories about some of these Soviet era helicopters that were falling from the sky. I mean, they were very unsaved.
Raisi's death comes at a delicate time for Iran. The country's government is facing increased levels of descent and unpopularity over the state of the economy and its enforcement of strict dress codes for women.
He crept down very heavily when there were protests related to Iran's treatment of women, for example, and that really didn't endear him to broader society in Iran either.
That's Rosalind Matheson, who oversees coverage of Europe, Africa and the Middle East for Bloomberg. Under Raisi, Iran has also had to navigate its role in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Through him and the proxies that Iran controls in the region, we can see the pickups intensions that happened with countries like Israel, most recently with the conflict in Gaza.
Well Raj says the next president is unlikely to radically transform Iran's foreign or domestic agenda. A leadership change could alter relationships across the Middle East.
Where it might become interesting. For example, is then the relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia. We've only just seen in the past year the moves to actually have diplomatic ties again between these two Middle East and powers, and it's very tentative, still pretty fragile. And does any change in leadership in Iran effect the course of that relationship, which would be very important obviously, not just for the Middle East but the rest of the world.
I'm David Gura and I'm Sarah Holder.
Today on the big take what's next for Iran after the death of its president and.
What that means for a region already in turmoil. Ros Who was Ibrahim ray Easy?
Well, he was president since the election a couple of years ago, and he came to power really because there weren't that many other candidates to take over in the election, and he was a longstanding official in Iran. He was relatively close to the Supreme Leader. He was someone who had enacted policies over the years. He was obviously also someone who was a mesh really in the upper echelons of Iranian society, but he never had the level of
broad political clout that some of his predecessors did. He didn't have that grassroots resonance with the public either, and that really troubled him in his leadership because he never quite had the backing of the public. Under harmone, he was really very much in an actor of his policies versus setting his own course. He did have that strong background obviously as an Islamist in society, but he didn't have that grassroots appeal.
And how would you characterize Rayesi's time as president.
Well, he struggled in a number of ways. He came into power promising to fix the economy, which is of course a difficult ass when you've got an economy that's so heavily sanctioned, and he wasn't very successful in that regard. You can see in the way that the Aranian currency fell so heavily during his tenure and the fact that ordinary Iranians didn't really feel that their lot became better, and so that led to some dissent that you could
see show up in sporadic protests in Iran. And he was also very much a hard liner when it came to domestic descent.
Given all this, how is the contrary reacting to his death.
Well, we can see that state media and semi state media are displaying lots of signs of mass mourning and going on. People out in the streets, gathering in squares carrying his photograph, beating their chess. You know, footage showing that women are at moss sobbing, students at universities out
on mass distraughts. But we do know that he wasn't very popular at home, and we can see small signs that people are displaying in a way a sense of celebration at the news of his death, particularly Iranians living overseas. There were reports that people were setting off fireworks to celebrate outside Iran and certainly posting news celebrating his death
and inside Iran. Hominy has declared five days of public mournings, so we can expect to see more of that, but you doubt that the majority of Iranians in the country are really that upset at this news.
Raizi is set to be succeeded by Vice President Mohammed Macbear, who will then organize an election to replace him within fifty days. Walk us through what these next fifty days might look like.
Well, the question is, does anyone else put their hand up to be a candidate again? Ostensibly, these are elections and people can try and become a candidate, although there are a lot of very strict rules around eligibility that would probably rule many of them out. Is does the regime allow sort of a reformist like candidate to run
in the election? Do they put their weight behind Mockbhar as the anointed one from the regime, or do they allow a bit of a contest at least to sort of show to the Uranian people that they do allow that competition to happen and to encourage a bit more turnout than the last election when the turnout was very very low. But that has to be a careful exercise for the regime also because very much they want a continuity person in there, and the continuity candidate to be
the next president. The question again is it Mockbear or is it someone else?
And Raisie was also seen as a favorite to be next in line for Iran Supreme leader. What does his death and this election mean for succession planning?
Now the biggest question is not so much the next couple of months in the election and who becomes president, because again the ultimate power is really with the Supreme Leader. The question is at what point does someone succeed leader. He is in his eighties, we know he does have some health challenges, and at some point that broader succession
question is going to come up. And as you say, Racy was seen as someone who was going to be a contender for that, and the other person is how Many's son Muchdaba, and he now stands alone as the
most likely successor. That would be quite awkward though for Iran in some ways because after the nineteen seventy nine revolution in Iran, the idea of dynastic leadership family members passing control to each other really became seen as anathema and something that successive leaders really touted as something they were opposed to. They do have to be generally a high ranking Islamic cleric, which that would probably put Mockbear
for example, out of contention for that. But that's really going to be the broader question in the end, because whoever is the Supreme Leader really is the person setting the ultimate agenda for Iran.
And if the Supreme Leader is setting that ultimate agenda, do you expect that this election for president will result in significant changes in leadership or policy?
Very much unlikely in terms of policy when it comes to Iran domestically and in some measure unlikely to affect policy when it comes to some of the key foreign policy issues for Iran, most notably again the work of its proxies has bela Hamas the Huthis in the Red Sea, and certainly not the trajectory of the Israel Hamas conflict in Gaza. Where it might become interesting, for example, is
in the relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia. We've only just seen in the past year the moves to actually have diplomatic ties again between these two Middle East and powers, and it's very tentative, still pretty fragile. And does any change in leadership in Iran effect the course of that relationship, which would be very important obviously not just for the
Middle East but the rest of the world. Does it also change the trajectory in any way when it comes to the US, in particular the conversations that have been pretty well stalled around resuming the nuclear chord with the US. I mean, there's also the aspect of US politics and all of that with the presidential election coming up later this year, but there might be some changes there obviously policy wise for the US and those are probably the two biggest things to look out for.
After the break, my co host David Gera and Bloomberg's Nick Watams discussed the wider implications of Rayeasi's death for the region and the rest of the international community.
The death of President Raysi raises some critical questions about the path forward for Iran's allies and its adversaries. That's something National Security editor Nick Wadhams has been looking into what the president's death means outside of Iran. So, Nick, how involved was President Raisi in Iran's international affairs.
It's actually a great question because so much of Iranian leadership is pretty opaque and the decision making structure. What is clear is that the Supreme Leader, Ayatola Kamene, really calls all the shots. The president can be a moderating or a sort of quickening factor in that some of his predecessors, for example, had been a little more moderate,
had pushed for opening with the international community. But what was clear in this case was that Ibrahim Raci was really doubling down on the Supreme Leader's edict toward a more of a hardline stance.
Nick, you and I last spoke last month after that unprecedented attack that Iran launched on Israel. Any sense, with now a month plus hindsight, how involved the president was in planning that, in the execution of that.
That's not something really that would have run through his office in terms of the detailed planning and execution. I mean, he would have certainly signed off on it, and it would not have gone head had he not supported it. But in its current form, the Iranian government is really pretty streamlined. This is not a situation where the Iranian leadership gets into the situation room and really thrashes out thorny issues. The course has pretty much been set for
several years now. It was quite clear that Iran had to respond to Israel, that they felt compelled to respond, and the debate would have only been in the details, but not in the broader strategy.
Nick In the Middle East, there's been this fragile detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and now there's this fresh concern about what will happen to that relationship.
There's so many questions around what's going to happen in Saudi Arabia because the Saudi King himself is ailing, is extremely frail, and so we're waiting to see what's happening there. I think that's going to be a situation where you see things essentially put on hold. What's clear is that Saudi Arabia and Iran had wanted some sort of off ramp, and we're pushing in direction where they did not have
to be so confrontational to one another. But again, the Israel situation complicates things so much because Saudi Arabia had been very delicately nosing around this issue of normalization with Israel. In fact, normalization had seemed like it was essentially going to become a reality before October seventh happened. After that it became much more distant. But there had been these conversations between the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia on normalization.
The big question now, though, is if those talks are tentatively starting to resume again, as it does appear, what does that mean for Saudi Arabia and Iran? And it would appear that the more Saudi Arabia pushes towards some form of normalization with Israel, the less chance it's going to have toward a broader reprochmount with Iran.
When you look at which world leaders have expressed their condolences. I see President Putin Prime Minister Modi of India. What does that tell you about the role that President Rice he played the world stage.
Well, the US has pushed Iran for so long and pushed other countries to stay away from Iran. They've sanctioned Iran, They've sanctioned companies that did business with Iran, and the result of that has been this really fascinating fracturing of the global economy where countries that the US has essentially expelled from its own economy, like Russia and to some degree with China, have really made common cause together and have found that if they do business with one another,
they don't necessarily even need the United States. So Russia and Iran have in some ways gotten much closer. Iran
has supplied Russia with drones for the Ukraine War. India is really a fascinating case because it's very much taken a much more non aligned approach, where it's decided, hey, we are not going to pick sides, and so you really see the limits of US leverage overseas where you have a country the US wants to make common cause with in India, and he is simply saying, no, we're going to keep up our relations, We're going to keep in touch, and it's really shown a great test for
the United States. President Biden threw a state dinner for Prime Minister Modi, and he's just saying, no, we're going to keep our own foreign relations, We're going to keep contact with Iran, and there's nothing you can do about it.
On Monday afternoon, White House Advisor John Kirby addressed President Rayesi's death during a press briefing President Race.
He was responsible for atrocious human rights in his own country, the arrest and the physical violence against hundreds of protesters, No question, this was a man who had a lot of blood on his hands. That said, as in any other case, we certainly regret in general the loss of life and offered official condolences as appropriate.
Nick there are the geopolitical implications, and then there's the economic and the market fallout. Wasn't much market movement right after this crash, and I wonder what your sense is of how President Ris's death could affect the global oil market.
So I think the message you're seeing there is a sense that for all of the political upheaval and the questions people have around that death and the surprise, the shock of the Iranian president being killed in this helicopter crash. There is not actually an expectation that it would lead
to major policy changes in Iran. Given the dominance of the Supreme Leader, the control he has over Iran's direction, the belief is that actually Iran will not make significant changes in terms of its energy policies, in terms of its political policies, its policies on the national security front. And you see the same with Saudi Arabia. The king's health has been failing for some time. The Crown Prince
has so much control. The feeling is that actually these changes, which seem from the outside like upheavals, will not actually change the course of travel for either of those countries all that much.
So there's going to be the election in the coming months around Supreme Leader made that announcement on Monday. He also said there's going to be a period of morning. What is the international community going to be watching for until that election? A couple things that will be really interesting to track. One is what will Iran's stance be toward the international community. So is this a possibility remote as it may seem now for some sort of reprochmode
with the West. Is there an opening here to continue some of the back channel conversations toward potentially easing concerns
around Iran's nuclear program. Is there a window here where you could seize this moment and say, Okay, we can come to some sort of agreement, or will it be just exactly the opposite, a moment where Iran will not want to let its adversaries such as the US and Israel exploit a period that may be seen as a period of real instability and vulnerability, and they're just going to double down and clam up and not have any
interaction with the outside world. Those interactions and those diplomatic conversations tend to happen in see secrecy anyhow, so they can be tough to track.
But what we're really looking for right now, is there going to be a sort of bunker mentality in Iran where all contact essentially with the outside world is cut until they get through these elections. Or do we see a moment where there actually is some outreach and conversation that could lead to an easing of tensions in the future.
This is the big take from Bloomberg News I'm David.
Gera and I'm Sarah Holder. This episode was produced by David Fox, Thomas Lou, Julia Press, and Audriana Tapia, who also fact checked this episode. It was mixed by Blake Maples.
Our senior producers are Kim Gittleson and Naomi Shavin. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole Beemster Borr is our executive producer and she edited this episode. Sage Bauman is our head of podst Thanks.
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