What to expect after the death of the Iranian president, compulsory motor insurance suffers from sanctions, Russian trace in the EU is visible but not proven

A day after the Iranian president's helicopter crashed, clarity arrived: Ebrahim Raisi was dead. The uncertainty over the succession of power had only just begun.

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Iran today officially confirmed the death of its President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last Sunday. The previous day, Raisi's Mi-171 flew to Iran after the ceremonial opening of hydroelectric dams on the border with the participation of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, but went missing in the remote mountainous area of ​​northwestern Iran (East Azerbaijan Province). During the day, there were conflicting reports about the fate of Raisi and the officials flying with him, but on Monday morning, rescuers reached the site of the helicopter crash and fire. There were no survivors.

The cause of the crash has not been officially named, but there are no grounds to suspect third parties yet. Most likely, it was due to weather conditions: there was low cloud cover and dense fog at low temperatures. Accordingly, pilot error is likely, possibly due to icing conditions.

What's next

According to the Iranian constitution, the country's vice president, Mohammad Mokhber, will become acting president. Early presidential elections must be held within 50 days.

• Raisi's death raises the question of succession in power in Iran and could provoke a struggle between factions in the country's far from monolithic elite. The fact is that 63-year-old Raisi was not only the country's "secular" president, but also the favorite, if not the direct successor, of Iran's aging Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In the two-part system of power in the Islamic Republic, the president is a "prime minister" position, with the ayatollahs remaining in charge.
• Unlike former President Hassan Rouhani, whose term saw Trump's thaw in relations with the West and the nuclear deal , Raisi "followed the religious leadership's line without deviation," earning the nickname "the invisible president." But he has more blood on his hands than other modern Iranian politicians, The Atlantic writes . Raisi, who rose through the legal ranks to become the country's attorney general and, in 2019, the head of the Supreme Court, is associated with the executions of thousands of dissidents in the 1980s.
• At the same time, Raisi was not just a cleric, but an ultra-conservative, the custodian of the Imam Ali Reza mausoleum in the Shiite holy city of Mashhad, and a sayyid (a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad). In short, he was the ideal candidate to replace Khamenei. The 2021 elections were cleared for him, in which he won more than 60% of the vote.
• Acting President Mokhber is not a simple deputy or a "dummy", but a former officer of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). For example, he has visited Russia more than once, and it is with him that close cooperation with Iran in the field of drones is associated . But he remains close to the Mashhad clan, whose prospects have worsened since Raisi's death.
• All observers advise paying close attention to the speaker of parliament, former Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is also close to the IRGC. Ghalibaf has earned a reputation as a technocrat rather than an ideologist, and has already run for president three times. Opponents accuse him of corruption and lack of principles, but he is quite popular among the people.
• One possible configuration after Ali Khamenei is Ghalibaf as president and a relatively weak supreme leader, the Ayatollah's 54-year-old, non-public son Mojtab Khamenei. But hereditary succession is a sore spot in the Iranian mentality, shaped by decades of sanctions since the Shah's overthrow in 1979, so a smooth transition is not to be expected here either.

What do I get out of this?

The death of the president will increase volatility within Iran and in the Middle East as a whole - the same Atlantic sees in what is happening a dress rehearsal for the squabble for the position of supreme leader. However, observers do not expect major changes in the country's foreign policy - either in the Russian, American or Israeli direction - as long as this is the prerogative of the ayatollahs, not the presidents. Brent oil reacts restrainedly, remaining at $85.

It is noteworthy that Iran's main rival in the region, Saudi Arabia, is also expecting changes in power, but with the opposite sign. It became known that the country's de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, cancelled a trip to Japan due to the poor health of the elderly King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.One should not expect any abrupt moves from the heir to the consolidation of power either .

TECHNO NEWSLETTER

What's New with OpenAI and Google, OSINT Tools Guide

In the new issue of the tech newsletter, we talk about a paired event in the world of AI, highlight the main points in the presentations of OpenAI and Google, and find out the reasons for the apparent lag in this area of ​​the leader of Internet search. In the regular column "Online Investigation" this time there is a large selection of guides, protocols and methods for working with open data.

MARKETS

OSAGO does not provide repairs

The average delivery time for car parts to Russia has doubled and now stands at one and a half months, Izvestia writes . The reason is delays in payments to China, Turkey and Saudi Arabia — the main suppliers of parts — due to the threat of secondary US sanctions. Accordingly, the average repair time under OSAGO has increased to 50 days, while the standard is 30 days.

Since failure to meet deadlines means paying the auto repair shop for the overdue payment, real repairs under OSAGO have become a rare exception - only 3-5%. In other cases, the client receives money that may not be enough for quality repairs. The future of the market is a further transition to analogs of spare parts, complete Sinicization and price increases.

Containers are becoming more expensive due to non-return

The failure to return containers from Russia to China via the Russian Railways network in May led to the fastest growth in freight in the last year and a half — by 5% in a month, or $300 per 40-foot container. The cost of issuing a container to Moscow has increased by $500 in a month. Oil and coal are currently competing for the capacity of railways with returnable containers, but if the trend of falling exports to China continues, container tariffs will stop growing.

MONEY

Business will wait for the holidays

The Central Bank discussed the terms of credit holidays for businesses with companies. It is assumed that medium, small and micro companies will be able to suspend payments on each credit agreement for six months - but only once during the term of the agreement and only once every five years. Banks are not eager to provide such holidays, but they are quite in demand and are included in the list of instructions from Vladimir Putin's address to the Federal Assembly. The State Duma should discuss the bill in two to three weeks.

SANCTIONS

Russian trace is visible, but not proven

The "Russian trace" is visible in several high-profile incidents with damage to critical infrastructure of the European Union, the cases themselves are stalled, writes The Wall Street Journal. Russia prefers to act through private companies, and it is not possible to collect sufficient evidence by EU standards. In some cases, they prefer not to mention Russia officially even in the presence of circumstantial evidence.

The publication, in particular, recalls the incident with the damage to the Balticconnector gas pipeline by the anchor of the Chinese vessel Newnew Polar Bear in October 2023. But the vessel had a Russian crew, and the nuclear container ship Sevmorput was following closely behind during the incident, the publication notes. Also suspicious is the damage to the fiber optic cable near Spitsbergen just before the start of the war and the disruption of the railway infrastructure in Germany in October 2022.

The article comes ahead of the expected publication of a report by the Norwegian Police Security Service on acts of sabotage by Russia. The most high-profile allegations in recent months have involved GPS jamming in northern Europe.