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 an extended historical past of involvement in giant enterprise conglomerates intently tied to Iran’s supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In a press release on Monday, Mr. Khamenei stated 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 traditionally not been contenders to succeed their bosses,” stated Robin Wright, a joint fellow on the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Wilson Center in Washington. “The bigger question,” she added, “is who will the regime allow to run for the office.”
Mr. Mokhber is round 68 years previous and have become first vp in August 2021. He is 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 struggle within the 1980s served as a member of the Revolutionary Guards medical corps.
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 struggle 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 Foundation, Sina Bank and Setad, a conglomerate solely managed by Ayatollah Khamenei that has billions of {dollars} in property 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 aren’t instantly state-owned. They are additionally linked to tasks which are priorities for the supreme chief and his interior 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 essential to the official Iranian energy construction.
The Mostazafan Foundation, 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 network for the supreme leader” that features holdings in key sectors of Iran’s economic system, together with finance, vitality, development and mining. It is the topic of sanctions by the U.S. Treasury as a result of it’s managed by Mr. Khamenei, and the Treasury stated it was created partially “to confiscate and manage property, including that originally belonging to religious minorities” in Iran, together with Baha’is and Jews.
The Treasury says the muse funnels a few of its cash to people and entities within the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps which were concerned in terrorism and human rights abuses.
The Sina Bank 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, relationship from at the very least 2007 when he joined the management of Setad. Within a couple of months of his appointment to Setad, Mr. Mokhber had based the Barakat Foundation, which has quite a lot of firms underneath its aegis together with a serious Iranian medical and pharmaceutical firm.
While his relationship with the supreme chief might be essential 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 might be dealt with.
“The regime is at a tipping point — politically, economically, and even militarily,” Ms. Wright stated, 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 bother for Iran’s theocracy, she added.
“It is very nervous about its future and the durability of its core ideology,” she stated.
Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.
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