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MK BHADRAKUMAR writes that Ebrahim Raisi’s positioning of Iran as a steadfast regional power will bear lasting effects on the years to come.
THE concept of political legacy is elusive if we tend to view it as traces of the past in the present. A legacy is both a causal claim – about cause and effect – and a counterfactual claim, that is, context-dependent.
When it comes to the presidential legacy of the late Iranian leader Ebrahim Raisi, there is also the added factor of an abridged timeline of just three years to gauge, develop, and illustrate his multi-dimensional political personality.
Almost all the important processes happening in West Asia are connected to Iran in one way or another, insofar as Tehran either influences them or is directly involved in them. Therefore, Raisi’s legacy is also the sum total of memories of his brief time in office as president. One begins to wonder whether establishing a lasting legacy was a key motivation for Raisi.
Unity of purpose
Raisi’s three-year term stands out for his non-involvement in the bickering endemic to Iran’s various powers and institutions, including parliament, judiciary, Revolutionary Guard Corps, military, intelligence services, the police agencies, clerical elite, the ubiquitous bazaar, the Friday prayer leaders, and so on.
Having been a cleric who spent his entire public life in the judiciary, he acquired a deep understanding of Ayatollah Khomeini’s vision of velayat-e faqih as crucial to the Islamic government. Hence, his total submission to the Supreme Leader was anchored on the conviction that it is essential for the harmonious functioning of the system. Arguably, in the past three years, the presidency and the government showed a rare unity of purpose, even in the face of the concerted fuelling of protests by western powers.
Raisi openly attributed his actions and policies to the Supreme Leader’s instructions. This meant that the government’s paralysis due to incessant factional feuds disappeared. The breakneck speed with which Tehran could advance its nuclear program, resisting pressure from Washington and Brussels, testified to this.
When Raisi came to power, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated by the previous government had reached a cul-de-sac. Raisi’s administration tried to negotiate with the US through European intermediaries to revive the nuclear deal. However, the Biden administration ultimately refused to re-enter the JCPOA, and the EU proved ineffective as a mediator.
Talks with the US
As things stand, Iran is a nuclear threshold state. Equally, last October, the UN arms embargo on missile transfers to Iran ended, as the European members of the Security Council decided not to instigate the snapback mechanism. Iran can now legally supply the missiles, and sanctioning such arms transfers is voluntary. This has been a tremendous diplomatic victory.
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From a longer-term perspective, another big shift in the situation around Iran is Washington’s tacit recognition that Tehran can be a factor of regional stability and security in the West Asian quagmire. The New York Times reported on May 18 that talks took place between senior officials of the US and Iran in the past week, the first such conversations after the Iran-Israel ‘tit-for-tat’ missile strikes.
Brett McGurk, the top White House official on West Asia policy, and Abram Paley, the deputy special envoy for Iran, attended the talks in Oman alongside Iran’s newly appointed interim Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani, who has played an active role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the US and European powers over the years.
The diplomatic tango in Muscat is reminiscent of the 2007-2009 period when the US and Iran knocked their heads together to explore the terms of cohabitation in Iraq. According to The New York Times report, the goal of the talks in Oman is ‘to try to get Iran, which supplies weapons and training to militias across the Middle East, to move to rein in its partners.’ The Times reported that ‘US intelligence officials assess that neither Hezbollah nor Iran wants to engage in a wider war.’
Looking eastward
But talks with the US are a minefield. The fact that they have become a ‘new normal’ under Raisi makes the stuff of political legacies, considering the tumultuous history of US-Iran animosity. Ironically, this carries the imprimatur of Raisi, who was vilified as a staunch hardliner who de-prioritised Iran’s relations with the west and instead scripted a growing and unprecedented level of cooperation with Russia.
It is entirely conceivable that the Biden White House estimates that it is unlikely that Iran and Russia will forge anything beyond their present agile partnership that gives them room for manoeuvre. Put differently, Moscow and Tehran do not see eye to eye on certain major issues (here and here), and the inordinate delay in jump-starting the Iran-Russia pact, even after tortuous high-level negotiations, only goes to show that strategic autonomy has been at the very core of Raisi’s foreign policy legacy.
Unsurprisingly, the imperatives felt by both sides to increase pressure on the US in West Asia and create a de facto united front against the US from the Black Sea to the Persian Gulf are just not good enough to conclude an official alliance.
Rational resistance
The Iranian news agency Nour News coined an apt description of the vital link between Iran’s diplomatic strategies and the battlefield needs of the Axis of Resistance under Raisi’s watch – ‘rational resistance’. At any rate, the geostrategic reality is that if Israel feels boxed in today, Iran is responsible for it.
Raisi realised that hard power alone could not solve the looming crisis and understood the importance of soft power embodied in Iran’s culture and values through which it could generate trust and mobilise the regional and international audience around forward agendas that looked beyond the military and political problems.
Abhorrence of war has become axiomatic in Raisi’s approach, which in turn has transmuted Iran’s ‘soft power.’ That became possible only because Raisi understood deeply that power is nothing more than the ability to affect others to get what you want.
The trajectory of the US–Iran talks in Oman will bear watch even after the deaths of Raisi and foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, an outstanding diplomat of modern times whose life was tragically cut short in its finest hour.
In the final analysis, Raisi and Amir-Abdollahian spurned the temptation to practice more than what heavenly power would permit – to borrow the words from Christopher Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus. Doesn’t that make their finest joint legacy for posterity as Iran navigates its way forward under a new leadership?
A legacy set in stone
Attraction is a potent tool. Some of the charisma (emotional appeal), vision, and communication that Raisi’s presidency began exuding was bound to rub on Iran’s external environment, too. Whether directly or indirectly involved, Tehran is connected to all the most critical processes in the region.
Dennis Francis, President of the UN General Assembly, has announced that the international body will hold a memorial service for Raisi and Amir-Abdollahian on 30 May.
Even the US realises that containment of Iran is no longer feasible; using force against it is counterproductive, and ignoring it is a mistake. Raisi’s prescience lies here – in anticipation of the region becoming ripe for change (here, here, and here), he prioritised Iran’s relations with its neighbours as the very core of its diplomacy.
It comes as no surprise that the UAE has sought the repositioning of the projection of US force against Iran in the American bases on its soil. And Bahrain, another apostle of the Abraham Accords, is signalling interest in normalising with Iran – despite past accusations against Tehran for inciting unrest within its Shia majority population.
- Ambassador MK Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat for three decades in the Indian Foreign Service with multi-year assignments in the former Soviet Union, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey. MK writes extensively on the geopolitics of Eurasia, China, West Asia and US strategies. He is a columnist at The Cradle, writes a popular blog called Indian Punchline, and is a syndicated columnist worldwide.
