The bodies of the Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi and the other victims of Sunday’s helicopter crash were taken by plane to the holy city of Qom and then to Tehran before a state ceremony on Wednesday.
Iranian state TV reported on large crowds gathering to pay their respects, while behind the scenes a power struggle was under way as the regime attempts to unify around a single candidate in a snap election provisionally scheduled for 28 June.
In the unlikely event of no single candidate winning a majority of votes in what is likely to be a highly managed election, a runoff would be held on 5 July.
Raisi’s body will eventually be taken to Birjand, in the South Khorasan region that Raisi represented, and then to the holy shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, his birthplace and the final resting place
Raisi was killed along with the foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, and seven others when the helicopter they were travelling in crashed in thick fog in the mountainous north-east of Iran. Video has been broadcast in Iran of distraught rescuers reaching the scene of the crash in thick woodland and discovering no sign of life.
An inquest is under way into the cause, including why it was decided Raisi’s helicopter should take off at a time when an amber weather warning had been issued for the area.
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, blamed US sanctions for making the Iranian civilian air industry unsafe.
Official news channels conveyed the impression of a country drowning in grief and sorrow, but at the same time resilient and capable of overcoming such a setback. Dissidents within Iran gave a picture of Tehran residents quitting the capital to drive north for a holiday.
The interior minister, Ahmad Vahidi, speaking at a ceremony for Raisi in Tabriz near the crash site, said that “in any other country this incident would have a very dark future, but with the supreme leader’s presence and the peace he conveyed in his message, we will easily handle these issues.”
Iran’s first vice-president, Mohammad Mokhber, has taken over as interim president as required by the constitution. Ali Bagheri, an experienced nuclear negotiator, has been appointed acting foreign minister.
The new president will be critical not only to Iran’s future relations with the west but also in guiding the debate about the eventual successor to the 85-year-old supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. A provisional timetable for the elections has been published that includes the possibility of allowing electronic voting in Tehran, where turnout has been collapsing in recent years.
The 88-strong Assembly of Experts, the body that upon the death of the supreme leader decides the successor, met on Tuesday to elect a 93-year-old cleric, Mohammad Ali Movahedi Kermani, as chair. A seat set aside for Raisi was filled with flowers and a photograph of him.
A key test in the upcoming presidential election will be whether the Guardian Council, the body that filters candidates, allows any centrists to stand who have the necessary political experience to mount a serious challenge to hardliners. In the 2021 presidential election, Ali Larijani, a hugely experienced former speaker of parliament who built Iran’s relations with China, was barred. It makes it unlikely he will be allowed to stand this time. Similarly, the former president Hassan Rouhani was banned from standing for the Assembly of Experts.
As a result, with half the electorate apparently turning their backs on guided Iranian democracy, the power struggle in the regime is no longer between reformists and hardliners but within conservative factions.
The recent parliamentary elections saw advances for the ultra-conservative Front of Islamic Revolution Stability, led by Hamid Rasaee.
The most likely successor to Raisi at present is the current speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, but his faction did not do well in parliamentary elections and he has been dogged by allegations of corruption.
Saeed Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator and secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, stood aside for Raisi in the 2021 election and is said to be eager to stand. But he is seen as extreme and unpredictable by other conservatives, who will try to persuade the supreme leader not to back him.
The idea of Jalili holding the Iranian presidency while Donald Trump, if re-elected, is in the White House fills some diplomats with horror.
Rob Macaire, a former UK ambassador to Tehran, said Raisi’s death raised a dilemma for the regime, especially over how open a field to allow.
He said: “The regime’s efforts to paint Raisi as a popular figure who will be missed by ordinary Iranians seem doomed to fall flat. When regime leaders engineered Raisi’s victory in the 2021 elections by disqualifying any other credible candidates, they largely abandoned the fig leaf of democratic legitimacy that previous elections had conferred. He was certainly not in power because of his charisma or original thought. He was a textbook loyalist to the supreme leader.”