With the demise of President Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s first vp, Mohammad Mokhber, turns into performing president. Mr. Mokhber is a conservative political operative with a protracted historical past of involvement in giant enterprise conglomerates intently tied to Iran’s supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In an announcement on Monday, Mr. Khamenei mentioned that Mr. Mokhber should work with the heads of the legislature and judiciary to carry elections for a brand new president inside 50 days.
Vice presidents in Iran are sometimes low profile, working extra as gamers inside the authorities than as public figures.
“Iran’s vice presidents have historically not been contenders to succeed their bosses,” mentioned Robin Wright, a joint fellow on the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Wilson Heart in Washington. “The larger query,” she added, “is who will the regime permit to run for the workplace.”
Mr. Mokhber is round 68 years previous and have become first vp in August 2021. He’s initially from Khuzestan Province in Iran’s southwest, bordering Iraq and the Persian Gulf. He was a deputy governor there, and throughout the Iran-Iraq warfare within the Eighties served as a member of the Revolutionary Guards medical corps.
Considered one of Mr. Mokhber’s comparatively few high-profile appearances got here when he and three different senior Iranian officers went to Moscow in October 2022 to finish a sale of Iranian drones and ballistic missiles to Russia, to be used within the warfare in Ukraine.
Mr. Raisi selected him as vp after Mr. Mokhber held senior positions in a few of Iran’s strongest organizations, together with the Mostazafan Basis, Sina Financial institution and Setad, a conglomerate solely managed by Ayatollah Khamenei that has billions of {dollars} in belongings and was concerned — not solely efficiently — in efforts to make and distribute a Covid-19 vaccine.
All three organizations are a part of an opaque community of economic entities which are tied to the Iranian state, though they don’t seem to be straight state-owned. They’re additionally linked to initiatives which are priorities for the supreme chief and his internal circle.
Mr. Mokhber’s involvement means that he has been a profitable behind-the-scenes participant who’s accustomed to the financing networks which are vital to the official Iranian energy construction.
The Mostazafan Basis, the place Mr. Mokhber labored within the early 2000s, is formally a charity however is described by the U.S. Treasury as “a key patronage community for the supreme chief” that features holdings in key sectors of Iran’s financial system, together with finance, power, building and mining. It’s the topic of sanctions by the U.S. Treasury as a result of it’s managed by Mr. Khamenei, and the Treasury mentioned it was created partially “to confiscate and handle property, together with that initially belonging to spiritual minorities” in Iran, together with Baha’is and Jews.
The Treasury says the inspiration funnels a few of its cash to people and entities within the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps which have been concerned in terrorism and human rights abuses.
The Sina Financial institution has confronted sanctions by the U.S. Treasury and the European Union for financing Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program.
Mr. Mokhber seems to have risen to the highest of Iran’s political management partially due to the shut relationship he developed with Iran’s supreme chief, courting from at the least 2007 when he joined the management of Setad. Inside a couple of months of his appointment to Setad, Mr. Mokhber had based the Barakat Basis, which has quite a few firms underneath its aegis together with a serious Iranian medical and pharmaceutical firm.
Whereas his relationship with the supreme chief will likely be vital whereas elections are being organized, analysts say {that a} a lot bigger group of high-ranking officers round Mr. Khamenei will decide how this delicate interval in Iran will likely be dealt with.
“The regime is at a tipping level — politically, economically, and even militarily,” Ms. Wright mentioned, noting Iran’s large-scale aerial assault on Israel final month that was practically solely intercepted, which she known as “a humiliating failure.” Low turnout in parliamentary elections in March was additionally an indication of hassle for Iran’s theocracy, she added.
“It is extremely nervous about its future and the sturdiness of its core ideology,” she mentioned.
Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.
