An Expert Explains: What Ebrahim Raisi’s death means for Iran

News Snapshot:

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian died in a helicopter crash on Sunday. This is how Iran’s political system works, and what the fallout of Raisi’s death might be. Raisi was born in 1960 in a clerical family in Mashhad, Iran’s holiest city. He was educated in Islamic law and jurisprudence at the Qom seminary, where Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian Revolution and founder of the Islamic Republic, taught. His background, hardline conservatism, and long association with the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, led to Raisi being picked as a presidential candidate, first...