The Death of Ebrahim Raisi, but With Jokes

It's okay: He was bad

Photo from Getty contributor.

On May 19, Iranian authorities announced that President Ebrahim Raisi’s helicopter made a “hard landing” in the mountains of northern Iran. The report was accurate: Running the fuck into a mountain and exploding in a ball of flames meets anyone’s definition of a “hard landing”. Strangely, several Iranian news agencies reported that Raisi had survived the crash, which suggests that there was a moment when the Iranian regime was considering Weekend at Bernie’s-ing the whole situation. But, perhaps after finding the body, they seem to have decided that no Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses in the world could disguise what had happened, so they announced that Raisi had died.

Immediately, the whole world wondered: Was Raisi bad enough that it’s okay to make jokes about him right away? Or did there need to be a period where we soft-pedal the mockery, like with Silvio Berlusconi? Raisi was a cleric closely aligned with Iran’s conservative leadership and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and was known as “The Butcher of Tehran” for his role in sentencing thousands of political prisoners to death in 1988. All of which is to say: Have a fucking field day, Twitter. Your bitchiest put downs this week should be directed towards Raisi and not wasted on some NFL player who is a kicker, for Christ’s sake.

Was Raisi’s death an accident? Anti semites everywhere took a break from blaming Israel for Gaza, inflation, gas prices, Covid, ice cream headaches, the end of Young Sheldon, the current state of the Ghostbusters franchise, and the Indiana Pacers making the Eastern Conference Finals to blame Israel for the crash. Of course, Israel has assassinated Iranian opponents before, so as conspiracy theories go, this one was closer to “Tulsi Gabbard is a foreign asset” than “Tom Hanks is a pedophile operating out of a DC pizza parlor.” But Israel has denied involvement, which you probably wouldn’t do if your foreign policy has an unmissable beat-up-someone-on-your-first-day-of-prison element to it. Also, Raisi is replaceable — Iran is not short on hard-line theocrats — and he was far from the most important figure in Iran’s government, which would make assassinating him a bit like trying to destroy U2 by targeting Larry Mullin, Jr.

For the moment, the presidency falls to Iran’s first vice president, Muhammad “Gerald Ford” Mokhber. Mokhber must hold elections within 50 days, and he is not considered to be a contender for the role — sorry if you had to read that here, Muhammad (but thanks for subscribing!). Decisions about who will be allowed to run will be made by a group of lawyers and clerics known as The Guardian Council, and if you think you hate lawyers and religious freaks now: Imagine if they formed a group called The Guardian Council and decided who could run for president! But that’s how things work in Iran, because fundamentalists have near-total control; it’s like what the US would be if radical Pilgrims had seized the government and forced everyone to wear buckle hats and wage holy war against Methodists.

Real power in Iran is held by Ayatollah Khamenei, who is conservative even by the standards of super-orthodox guys with beards. He’s 85, so he’d be in the prime of his political career if he was American, but Iran has started to wonder about his successor. The next supreme leader of Iran will be chosen by a group of clerics called the Assembly of Experts, and one thing is clear: There seems to be no end of Iranian dudes who are willing to declare themselves The Association Of People Who Know Better Than You. These wisened experts have turned one of the most educated, resource-rich countries in the region into an economic basket case with a vast array of enemies, so you have to wonder how bad things would be if Iran didn’t have such a five-star group of whiz kids in charge.

Before Raisi’s death, it was widely thought that either Raisi or Khamenei’s son Mojtaba would be the next Ayatollah. But now that Raisi is wolf chow, Mojtaba probably has the inside track. This presents a problem for the regime, because if Mojtaba takes over for his father, then Iran would appear to be a plain-old hereditary monarchy. That would be a rough admission for a regime built on Islamist patter; it would be like if David Blaine issued a statement admitting “it’s all just magnets and shit.” If Mojtaba tries to bolster his claim by turning to the Revolutionary Guard, it could empower the military and introduce more volatility to a region that needs more volatility the way Greece needs more guys on beaches wearing Speedos that don’t totally cover their pubes.

One danger stemming from Raisi’s death is that instability could complicate the clash between Iran and Israel. Conflict between the two had been simmering for years, but — much like the feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar — it recently broke into the open. Last month, Iran finally directly attacked Israel after 45 years of flirty, Ross-and-Rachel-will-they-or-won’t-they tension. After a minor retaliation by Israel — they wrote “SLUT” on the hood of the Ayatollah’s Trans Am — the conflict appeared to die down. But now, the probability of the conflict re-igniting has gone up, especially if Iran blames Israel for Raisi’s death, which they might if they don’t get my Larry Mullin, Jr. reference earlier (he’s U2’s drummer). Raisi’s death has added more uncertainty to the situation, though the certainty that Iran’s government will remain one of the world’s worst despite this development sadly remains.

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