Raisi is smokescreen, Khamenei still calls the shots
Despite all of the commentary and statements of world leaders regarding Ebrahim Raisi’s fresh presidential election win in Iran, he is but a smokescreen.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei still calls the shots on all key issues for the Islamic Republic.
In spite of Raisi’s hard-line bona fides, experts still expect the US and Iran to return to the JCPOA nuclear deal, maybe even as soon as within the next six weeks, or at most before the end of the calendar year.
This will give Jerusalem and Washington some temporary breathing room and push Tehran back from being a mere couple of months away from a nuclear weapon.
However, it will also empower the ayatollahs to up their financing and backing of proxies and terrorist groups throughout the region, which present significant dangers to Israel from Syria, Lebanon and Gaza.
The big questions about the return to the nuclear deal, which US President Joe Biden had made clear he wanted to do in his election campaign, was whether the terms of the JCPOA would be improved.
The opening shot on this issue is whether Iran’s advancements in centrifuge technology will be seriously pushed back or merely symbolically, as was the previous style of the JCPOA.
Practically speaking, the question is whether Washington will get Tehran to destroy its IR-4, IR-6 and other advanced centrifuges that could allow it to enrich uranium at a much faster rate and bolt them toward a nuclear weapon, or whether they will just be placed in storage.
The next move is whether there will be an add-on agreement that extends the deal’s nuclear limits beyond 2030 and restricts ballistic-missile testing for ranges, which threaten not only the US but also Israel, limits Iranian adventurism in the region and expands IAEA inspections to “anytime anywhere.”
Without filling these gaps, any short-term relief for Israel will quickly be replaced by a potentially explosive rising long-term nuclear threat.
Also, without filling these gaps, the Jewish state will need to continue its policy of thousands of attacks to prevent the transfer of precision-guided missiles to Syria and Lebanon, and another conflict in Gaza will remain a looming potential issue.
These were constant issues while Khamenei was in power, and Raisi has made no actual difference.
FOR NOW, the only difference Raisi is making is within Iran, where he is likely to initiate a wave of crushing political dissent at top levels inside the government.
The outgoing government of Hassan Rouhani at times publicly criticized how much the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps invested fighting in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, instead of focusing on improving the domestic economy of Iran.
This criticism will likely stop, and there will be more lockstep support at the government level.
To the extent that Iran was a strange, mixed authoritarian regime that had some unusual openness to debate certain issues and permit public protests within small numbers (large numbers would lead to quick oppression and sometimes mass killings), it will likely swing to an even more authoritarian direction.
Raisi may also tarnish Iran’s already poor international image due to his history of promoting mass executions in the 1980s.
But his real significance will be based on whether he succeeds Khamenei.
Khamenei, 82, has had ongoing health problems, and many saw his extraordinary tampering with the current election to ensure Raisi’s win (Raisi lost by 20% of the vote in 2017) as a sign that he wants the incoming president to succeed him as supreme leader.
If Raisi does succeed Khamenei, this would be the first major opportunity for change in Iran – for better or for worse.
At that point, many would expect him to continue Khamenei’s policies, as that is the public image he has crafted.
This would mean Iran maintaining the same level of threat against Israel in the nuclear and proxies’ realms.
However, change is always possible since Raisi will not need to look over his shoulder, and he may see Iran’s next 20 years differently than Khamenei.
But given his career and the generation that he comes from, at age 60, he is unlikely to invoke positive change as much as he may be more oppressive; see Bashar Assad’s style of change from his father, Hafez.
On the other hand, maybe having a new leader will make the regime more vulnerable than it has been in decades, as occurred with Bashar Assad.
Khamenei’s putting Raisi into office as president now is designed to thwart such instability.
Yet as recently as 2019, the world saw an Iran on fire with protests, so even Khamenei’s best-laid plans may eventually not be enough to hold down the oppressed Iranian people.