Geo-Strategy #7: Who Killed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi?

Okay, so let's start class and start to think about the question: how and why did the Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi die? When you do history, or when you do analysis about current events, you're always going to encounter three major problems. The first major problem is that there's very little information that you can work with. Truth is very limited. That's the problem. Second problem is that the information that you have may not be true, so there's also misinformation. That's the second problem. And the third problem is that there's always going to be an official narrative that the media and the government publish, and it may not be true, but it's the one that people accept. So the challenge for us today is we know that the Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi died, and we will have to use analysis, game theory analysis, to figure out how he died and who might have killed him. Does that make sense? But the problem again is we are working with very little information, whatever the Iranian government chooses to disclose to the public. So what do we know? We know as a fact that on May 19th the Iranian president was in Azerbaijan for a

dam opening ceremony, and then he got into his helicopter and he was flying back into the country, and when he was flying back there was an accident that caused the helicopter to crash, killing all nine people on board, including the president, the foreign minister, three crew members, the governor of a province, a local religious leader, the bodyguard of the president and the head of the president's security detail. So all nine people died, and we have reason to believe that the most probable reason is an accident. That this was an accident, that it was bad weather, there's a fog, the pilot couldn't really see and crashed into the mountain. The evidence for this is that, one, this happens a lot. For example, in 2020 the very famous basketball player Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash along with his daughter. So this actually happens a lot. The second piece of evidence is that the helicopter they were flying in is very old. It was basically an American helicopter that they started to use in the 70s, and after the Revolution America refused to cooperate with Iran, so they could never actually maintain the helicopter. So maybe it was just a malfunction. So these are two compelling reasons why most people believe this is an accident, and this is again probably the cause that will go down in history.

But game theory analysis requires us to explore other possibilities, so there are two other possibilities.

Second possibility is adversary, which means that either the United States or Israel or even possibly aan, but a foreign adversary was responsible for this. The problem with this theory though is one of opportunity and motive. What this means is it's very hard for a government to plan an assassination of an Iranian leader in Iran. It's very hard, the opportunity isn't there. So maybe Israel or America want him dead, well, how could they pull it off? It's very hard to do such a thing. Second problem is motive. What reason would Israel or the United States have for killing the president? Now in the past the United States and Israel have killed Iranians before. For example, in January 2020 President Donald Trump ordered the assassination of General Soleimani in Baghdad. But there was a motive here. The motive is that Soleimani is responsible for Iranian foreign policy in the Middle East and therefore a direct threat to American interests. And Israel in the past has staged assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists in Iran, but again the motive is, well, Israel is afraid that Iran develops a nuclear weapon, and therefore the easiest way to stop that is to kill the scientists.

Israel on April 1st of this year also staged an air strike against the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, killing two Iranian generals, but again the motive is what Israel said was that these generals were working with Hamas to threaten Israel. So the motive is very clear. And the problem here is it's very unclear what the motive is for killing the Iranian president. In fact there's a lot of risk in that. But again, I am not discounting the possibility that it could be a foreign adversary.

And the third possibility is an enemy, meaning that there were certain individuals or factions or groups in Iran that wanted the president dead. With this internal enemy idea, opportunity doesn't pose a problem, because obviously these enemies would have resources to track down and kill the president. An example of this is that remember that when the president was flying home there were three helicopters. It was only his helicopter that crashed, the two other helicopters were fine. Now in theory, and we don't know who was in the other two helicopters, but we can guess that they were probably military escort, they were there to protect the president, but at the same time if they wanted to kill the president they So was it the military?

The opportunity was there, but then the question is motive. Why would they do that?

The answer is that the possibility, again we are looking at possibilities, everyone agreed that Ebrahim Raisi would most likely become supreme leader of Iran when the current Ayatollah, Ayatollah Khamenei, died. Raisi is 63 and Khamenei is 85, so we can expect that within the next five years Khamenei will die and Raisi, who many see as a chosen protégé, will become the Ayatollah. Now the Iranian plugo system, it's kind of strange because it's an Islamic Republic, and what that means is that the ultimate authority is God, the Quran, and it's the Ayatollah who represents God and the Quran. So he's the ultimate authority, he has ultimate veto power, and the president is maybe like the CEO of the country. The person with the real power in the country is the Ayatollah, and if Raisi becomes the Ayatollah then we can expect major policy shifts in the country.

So then the question is, well, who would benefit from Raisi's death and stopping him from becoming the next Ayatollah? What people say, and again, guys, I'm working with very limited information, I don't know Iran that well, I just read the news, what people say is that there are two top contenders to be the next Ayatollah. The first contender, the most likely, is Raisi. The second contender is actually Khamenei's son, Mojtaba Khamenei. So with him gone, Mojtaba Khamenei is most likely to be the Ayatollah. Now this presents a problem for Iran, because it's an Islamic Republic, it's supposed to be under the rule of God, and one thing that most Iranians oppose is the idea of hereditary leadership, a father passing on leadership to his son. Because remember that in 1979 the Iranians had a revolution to overthrow the king, and everyone was in favor of overthrowing the king. So if Mojtaba Khamenei did become Ayatollah, this would actually create a political legitimacy crisis in Iran. And then the question is, all right, so Mojtaba Khamenei benefits, but who would benefit from having him as Ayatollah? The answer is actually very simple. There's a group in Iran called the Revolutionary Guard Corps, or the IRGC.

We will call them the Revolutionary Guards. What's interesting about them is that they are separate from the army, the military. So where do these guys come from and why are they separate from the army? That goes back to 1979. Remember in 1979 there's a popular uprising against the Shah of Iran, the king of Iran, and the government brought back Ayatollah Khomeini from exile to run the country, and Khomeini at that time was afraid of the army because the army had sworn allegiance to the king. So to deal with this problem Khomeini established another armed group called the Revolutionary Guard Corps. What they do is actually very different from the military. The military has an obligation to protect the nation, but the Revolutionary Guard has a responsibility to protect the revolution, the Islamic Republic, which means ultimately that they are Khomeini's, sorry, they are Khamenei's army, they only obey him. The other thing about the revolution is that not only were they trying to bring an Islamic Republic to Iran, but they were trying to export the revolution across the Middle East. So basically the Revolutionary Guard had two main functions.

The first function is to protect the Ayatollah and ensure the revolution succeeds in Iran, but the other function is to export the revolution to the Middle East, to spread Islamic revolution to Syria, Iraq, and that's why the Middle East was so disturbed and so angered by the revolution. All right, now this was why the IRGC was founded, and because so many countries considered Iran to be a threat they encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade the country in 1980. This started something called the Iran-Iraq War, and it was not just the Americans who supported this war, the Soviets also supported Saddam Hussein, and Middle East countries like Saudi Arabia also supported Saddam Hussein. It was a brutal war and a lot of Iranians died, but ultimately the Revolutionary Guard Corps was able to protect the revolution from foreign invaders, and because of that they became the most dominant military group in Iran, and so they had almost unlimited funds, not only to protect the revolution in Iran but also to export it overseas. Does this all make sense to you guys? But with so much power they eventually became corrupt. Today people believe that they control about 10 to 50% of the entire Iranian economy, and because you have such a monopoly of power, it meant that over time the economy stagnated.

Now Western sanctions, American sanctions, played a major role. Iran couldn't really sell its oil overseas. But the real problem was the fact that you had a monopoly of power, this Revolutionary Guard Corps controlling the entire economy, and this led to protests. The first big protest was in 1999. You had 50,000 students protesting the lack of democracy in Iran. What they were really protesting, of course, was the corruption of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, but you couldn't do that, you can't say that, so they were protesting for democracy. They were crushed. Then in 2009 to 2010 there's something called the Green Movement, and the idea of the Green Movement was that people wanted a new government that promised reform, and in the election their candidate, the reform candidate, lost, and people suspected that the Revolutionary Guard Corps cheated, and so there were violent protests, and again the Revolutionary Guard suppressed the revolution. At that point basically people lost faith in democracy, and so afterwards every other president was basically a puppet of the regime. And the most recent protest, in 2023, there was a young woman named Mahsa Amini, and she was arrested by the police for failing to wear a head covering in public, and she died in custody.

People suspect that she was beaten by the police, and this caused massive protests across the country. So for the past 10, 20 years there have been protests in Iran about the government and the economy, but mainly about the fact that the Revolutionary Guard has monopolized the economy to its own benefit, which has caused the economy to stagnate and for people to become poorer over time. But because the protests are so widespread, the Revolutionary Guard Corps ironically has become more powerful, because they are seen as the most loyal to the current regime. Their loyalty is not contested. And so what this means is this: if there's a change in leadership, if the Ayatollah dies and a new Ayatollah comes into power, what the new Ayatollah will do is reduce the power of the Revolutionary Guard. Does that make sense to you guys? Because he needs to establish his own power base, and the Revolutionary Guard is most loyal to the current leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei.

But if a new Ayatollah comes to power he needs to establish his own power base, so he will bring his people into power, and that means reducing the power of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Does that make sense? And so that will be a direct threat to the Revolutionary Guard. But if the current leader's son, Mojtaba Khamenei, were to become the new Ayatollah, then things would stay the same and the Revolutionary Guard would continue to control the economy. Does that make sense, you guys? All right, so again I'm presenting a reason why the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps would want to kill the president and ensure that the Ayatollah's son becomes the next leader, because they want to maintain the monopoly of power over the country. Doesn't that make sense to you guys?

All right, now I want to discuss who these people are and how they think about the world, because they're corrupt but they're ultimately religious fanatics that want to export the revolution across the Middle East. So let's talk about 1979. In 1979 the Shah left Iran because there were so many protests against him. The Shah realized that it was very hard for him to stay in power despite the brutality of the army and the police, there's just too many protests, too many people want to see him gone.

So he goes to America, and there are many Iranians who are outraged by this for two reasons. The first reason is that they want the Shah, the king of Iran, to stand trial for all his human rights crimes while he was king of Iran. That's the first reason. But the second reason is they were afraid that the Shah had gone to America to win America's support for an invasion of the country. The Shah was trying to get America to invade Iran and put him back in power, which happened in 1953. And so to counter the threat of the Shah, in November of 1979, 300 to 500 college students stormed the US Embassy and took it over and held 53 Americans as hostages. They demanded the Shah be returned to Iran to stand trial. Now this is obviously an invasion of American territory, this goes against international law, but when the students did this there was so much public support for the students that the authorities didn't really do anything. Also the Ayatollah Khomeini supported the students. So there was widespread public support for the students when the students invaded the embassy.

The first thing that diplomats must do is basically destroy all the files, all the secrets. All embassies come with things called shredders, you guys know what those are? Shredders are just basically machines, and if you want to destroy paperwork very quickly you put it in the machine and the machine will cut the paper into about 100 different strips of paper. This is the fastest, most effective way to destroy documents, and there are tens of thousands of pages. Can you guess what the students did? Over months the students slowly and methodically pieced the documents back together one by one. And what these documents revealed to the students and to the public in Iran is that the real center of power in Iran was not the palace where the Shah lived but the US Embassy. It was the US Embassy that was directing policy in Iran, it was the US Embassy that was responsible for the brutality of the regime, and it was the US Embassy that in 1953 staged a coup against the democratically elected government of Iran and installed the police state of the Shah. So these students, when they read these documents, were really angry. And you can imagine that these students, because they pieced together these documents, they're fanatics, and guess what, guys, these students have gone on to become the top leaders of the country.

I'll just give you three names. Hossein Dehghan, who was the Minister of Defense from 2013 to 2017, he was a student protester in the US Embassy. That's one person. Second person is Mohammad Ali Jafari, who from 2007 to 2019 was head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. And also Mohammad Bagheri, who is still the chief of staff of the Iranian army. So the Revolutionary Guard is staffed by individuals who hate America and see America as the Great Satan, and they basically want to go to war with America to avenge the wrongs and evils that America did to Iran. Does that make sense?

Second thing I'll mention is that when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980, Iran didn't really have an army, and the reason why is that the Revolutionary Guard Corps had arrested or exiled or executed the officers of the military because they were not seen as loyal to the revolution, they were seen as loyal to the Shah. Iran didn't have an army, and Saddam Hussein had airplanes, he had tanks, he had lots of soldiers, and everyone thought that the war would end very quickly.

But then what the Revolutionary Guard Corps did was they organized a new army called the Basij. This was a volunteer army of poor religious people from the villages, and what the Ayatollah Khomeini said to them is, we don't have weapons but we have God on our side. The Iraqis have armor but we have divine power. What they did was, to these villagers, and these guys are about your age, they're 16, 18, they gave each of these guys a rifle and a key to put over their necks. The idea is that this key is your entry into heaven, because when you die in war you are granted automatic entry into heaven. And so these guys, they were organized into groups of like 22, they would run ahead across Iraqi minefields, tanks would strike at them, helicopters would come and strike at them, and they would keep on running, and of course they would die because they didn't have any armor. But the Iraqis spent so much ammunition and bombs on them that eventually the Iraqi army became exhausted. Does that make sense?

And so they withdrew, but then Iran took the fight to Iraq. But this shows you that the main power in Iran, why Iran is such a powerful military, is that their Revolutionary Guard Corps are run by fanatics with a passion for revolution, and they're supported by the Basij, who are these poor, illiterate, religious volunteers, and there's tens of millions of them for Iran to draw on. What the Revolutionary Guard Corps has been doing after the Iran-Iraq War is they recognize that if an enemy comes to Iran, people are going to die, so they want to take the fight to them. That's why for the past 20, 30 years the Revolutionary Guard Corps has been supporting conflict in the Middle East. They started something called the Axis of Resistance. The Axis of Resistance includes Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, the Assad regime in Syria, as well as Shia militia in Iraq. And so all the money that the Revolutionary Guard Corps makes in Iran is then sent to this Axis of Resistance to create conflict against Saudi Arabia, the United States and Israel. Does that make sense? But you can imagine that there's some people, and there are actually a lot of people in Iran, who are like, why are we doing this again?

What if we withdrew from the Middle East and just focused on our own economy, then Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United States would have no reason to attack us. So there are people who are thinking, maybe the problem isn't Israel, maybe the problem isn't the United States, maybe the problem is these guys, because they're fanatics and they're creating all these problems in the Middle East, which is crippling our economy. If we stop these conflicts and just focus on our own economic development, then maybe our people will be better off. And one reason to think that there are people in Iran, politicians in Iran, who are extremely skeptical of Revolutionary Guard policy in the Middle East is that in January 2020, remember that General Soleimani was assassinated by the Americans, the response wasn't that big of a deal. The Iranians basically didn't respond, whereas the Revolutionary Guard, because their leader was killed, they demanded vengeance, they wanted to go to war, but we can suspect that it was politicians like Raisi who basically said, no, guys, let's be patient, going to war against Israel and the United States right now is suicidal.

So they were urging caution and restraint, and the Revolutionary Guard Corps didn't want that. And then on April 1st of this year the Israelis struck the Iranian Embassy, which made matters worse, and again at that time I'm sure the Revolutionary Guard Corps was like, let's just go to war, and again I'm sure Raisi and his team said to them, guys, we cannot beat the United States and Israel in a war, let's be strategic about this, let's be patient, our time will come, but we need to be And I'm sure that because they're fanatics they were like, they are in our way, these politicians are cowards, they're weak, they're soft, they're not believers, let's get rid of them. And then what happened on May 19th was an opportunity arose where there was fog and they were like, well, here's an opportunity, and so they caus Does it make sense, guys?

All right, so again I don't know what happened, but if we look at game theory and we examine who would benefit from the death of Raisi, this group of people, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, would most benefit, because it is very likely that if Raisi became next supreme leader, their authority and their policies would be And so by getting rid of Raisi it makes Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the Ayatollah, that much more probable in ascending to the supreme authority, and that allows them to maintain their monopoly of power.

And even if this succession causes a legitimacy crisis, well, it's good for them, because then the regime is even more dependent on them. Does that make sense? During these protests, especially the Green Movement, the Revolutionary Guard was the one responsible for cracking down, and they were violent and brutal in cracking down. So are you guys clear about the logic here? Any questions?

Okay, that's a great question. So S asks, does the military still exist? The answer is yes, it still exists. But again the Revolutionary Guard Corps has certain responsibilities that make it the most powerful group. The first thing is that it's responsible for the Navy. Why is this important? Because the Strait of Hormuz is a very strategic shipping lane, and so they're responsible to maintain that strait. The Navy allows them also to smuggle, which means that they can make more money for themselves. That's the first thing. Second thing is that they're also responsible for the program, the missile program, and this is where actually the military spends most of its money, the missiles.

The third thing is of course foreign policy, meaning that the Axis of Resistance interacts with the Revolutionary Guard Corps. General Soleimani and the two generals who died in the Israeli air strike, they all belong to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. So these three things mean that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controls basically all the money and all the power in the country. But they're still military. Does that make sense?

All right, any more questions? Okay, so Jack asked a great question: why do they believe that they can control Mojtaba Khamenei? So in 1989 the first Ayatollah, Khomeini, died and Ayatollah Khamenei succeeded him, and the moment he became the new Ayatollah he focused on cultivating his personal relationship with the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Basically there's about 2,000 of them and he made a point of meeting everyone and memorizing their names. He even knows the names of their children. So the current Ayatollah Khamenei has a great personal relationship with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. They're basically his private and the reason why the Revolutionary Guard would transfer loyalty to Mojtaba is that Mojtaba himself is an extremely unpopular figure.

If he were popular, if he were like a clever politician, then he would most likely become Ayatollah, but because he's very unpopular there's a lot of resistance to him. So if he becomes next Ayatollah it would be only because the Revolutionary Guard put him there, which means that he must be loyal and obedient to their policies. Does that make sense, Jack? But that's a great question. Any more questions before I move on?

Okay, so Celine asked a great question: what changes now that Raisi is dead? If it was an accident, then in theory nothing changes, because ultimately it's the Ayatollah Khamenei who is responsible for policy. But if I am correct and it was a planned assassination by the Revolutionary Guard Corps, then everything changes. What this means is that the political class goes away and the military class takes over and they dictate policy. So you will see, first of all, there's going to be an election. In late June there will be someone to replace the president, and it's most likely that the current vice president, who is Mohammad Mokhber, will become the new president.

This is important because Raisi does not come from the Revolutionary Guard Corps, he comes from the judiciary, that's a different power base, but Mohammad Mokhber comes from the Revolutionary Guard Corps, so he would advance Revolutionary Guard Corps interests. And if that's the case, then what we'll see is the country, the leadership, preparing its people for total war. We will see that the rhetoric becomes more extreme, preparing its people for an eventual American invasion. There'll be a much harsher crackdown on political That's the first thing.

Second thing is that the Revolutionary Guard Corps cannot defeat America face to face. The only thing that they can do to defeat America and Israel is to lure them into the country, and they do that by provoking them. There are different things that they can do to provoke America. The first is accelerate the nuclear program. What America and Israel have said is they see Iran possessing a nuclear weapon as an existential threat to the safety of Israel, so this is a no-no. So if Iran accelerates the program, this This is a direct provocation.

That's the first thing. Second thing is to encourage the proxies. Right now Israel is very concerned about Hezbollah in the north. Hamas has already attacked them, Hezbollah could also attack Israel. If Hezbollah attacks Israel, then Israel can only interpret this as Iran encouraging Hezbollah to attack them. But if Hezbollah attacks Israel, then Israel and the United States would see this as an escalation and they would be much more determined to eventually attack Iran in some way. You also have Shia militias in Iraq who could attack US military bases. You also have the Houthis in Yemen who can attack Saudi Arabia's oil fields. So you're encouraging your proxies to make things worse in the Middle East, in which case the United States can only conclude that we need to destroy the head of the snake, which is Iran. The third thing that could happen is basically Iran starts to attack shipping lanes. It makes shipping much more difficult. And the fourth thing is basically terror. Iran, through its proxies, launches terror attacks against America and its allies. So there are many things that Iran can do to provoke a war.

And again, if I'm right, and again I don't know if I'm right or not, then we should expect that in late June Mohammad Mokhber wins the election and his rhetoric becomes much more extremist: we need to take the fight to America, we need to avenge Soleimani. We can also expect that in the Middle East it becomes much more And we should see escalation, the acceleration of the program, proxies become much more violent, shipping is disturbed, and you have a terror campaign throughout the world. Does that make sense? All right, but again I don't know. And also, by the way, just because these things might happen does not mean that Raisi was killed by the Revolutionary Guard Corps, do you understand? But I'm saying that if in fact the Revolutionary Guard Corps did kill Raisi, then we should see these things happening, but just because these things happen does not mean that Raisi was killed. Does that make sense?

All right, any more questions? Okay, so Celine's question is, how would they fight the war? They can only fight the war in one way, which is to lure the Americans into attacking Iran. Does it make sense? It is suicide to attack America in the open.

Remember that America has shock and awe, which means that they have air supremacy, which means they have satellites that can see everything that you do, which means they have special forces. It is suicide to attack America in the open. So what Iran needs to do is trick America into Iran, and then America would lose for sure. That's something that we'll discuss next week, but that's what they have to do. And again, if they provoke America enough, then America will eventually get angry enough to send an invasion force against Iran. Does that make sense?

Any more questions? Is this clear to you guys, the logic here? So again, this is all speculation, I have no actual information or evidence. I'm just saying, Raisi died and it was probably an accident, but if it was not an accident, then who would most benefit from killing him or his death? The answer is the Revolutionary Guard Corps, because they see him as a direct threat to their authority. But at the same time, what's important to remember is that any new leader would see these guys as a problem, because they have too much power and they are creating too much tension overseas and they're too fanatical.

And so it's most likely that they would want to elevate Mojtaba Khamenei, because Mojtaba Khamenei is not popular and he would have to be loyal to the Revolutionary Guard Corps or he would need their help to maintain power. Does that make sense, guys?

All right, so next class we'll discuss what an actual war between the United States and Iran would look like, and what's important to remember is that I've been saying all semester that the United States will lose the war, but never have I said that Iran will win the war. The reason why is that this war will be brutal for Iran, tens of millions of people will die for no reason, and that's why politicians like Raisi and others are like, let's not go to war. All right, so I'll see you guys next week.