(NewsNation) — Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and the country’s foreign minister were found dead Monday hours after their helicopter crashed in fog, leaving the Islamic country without two key leaders as extraordinary tensions grip the wider Middle East.
John Bolton, a former national security adviser and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, joined NewsNation’s “Morning in America” to discuss how their deaths will impact Iran, saying there is likely to be little change regarding Iran’s world outlook.
“It won’t mean that much of a change from what Iran has been doing waging a proxy war against Israel through Hamas and other terrorist groups. I think if anything, the regime in Tehran tries to distract the attention of the Iranian people, and they torque up the pressure from Hezbollah from the Houthis, the Shia militia groups in Iraq and Syria against Israel,” Bolton said.
The crash comes as the Israel-Hamas war roils the region. Iran-backed Hamas led the attack that started the conflict, and Hezbollah, also supported by Tehran, has fired rockets at Israel. Last month, Iran launched its own unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel.
A hard-liner who formerly led the country’s judiciary, Raisi, 63, was viewed as a protege of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. During his tenure, relations continued to deteriorate with the West as Iran enriched uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels and supplied bomb-carrying drones to Russia for its war in Ukraine.
“On domestic affairs, this is a huge development. The regime is about as unpopular as it’s been since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and Raisi had a key role in what was largely predicted to happen. Now, he’s president of Iran, but the person who is really in charge is the Supreme Leader,” Bolton said. “So there’s a real risk here in a fragile situation, that if the opposition in Iran begins to make itself felt again, that the regime could find itself in very unstable uncharted territory.”
Under the Iranian constitution, if a president dies, the country’s first vice president — in this case, Mohammad Mokhber — becomes acting president, with elections mandated within 50 days. Khamenei has publicly assured Iranians that there would be “no disruption to the operations of the country” as a result of the crash.
“There’ll be what they call a presidential commission with this acting president and other Iranian officials, basically charged in the next couple of months, to set up an election for a full-time president,” Bolton said.
“So at least in theory, they’re in kind of a holding pattern, kind of a caretaker government to get a new election set up. But I’m not sure they’re going to be ready to do it in 50 days. This is not a free and fair election situation.”